400 Episodes

Our transcripts are created using software and/or AI, so apologies if there are errors in them.
Ronald (00:01):
Welcome to episode 400th of Do the Woo, and I’m joined by none other than BobWP himself
BobWP (00:11):
A surprise.
Ronald (00:13):
How is it to be interviewed by one of your co-hosts?
BobWP (00:16):
It’s bizarre. I think it’s happened a couple times. We did something, I think when we launched it on the news site like three years ago. We did it that way, but yeah, it was odd in a way, but it’s fun too because I don’t have to think much except for basically the answers.
Ronald (00:35):
Yeah, true. Episode 400, that’s a lifetime. I know you’ve increased the number of episodes in the recent years, but still it’s a huge part of your life and I just want to dig a little bit deeper into the early days, maybe episode one. Do you recall that first episode and launching it?
BobWP (00:53):
I remember episode one and I think at that point I realized, and it might’ve been maybe the first few episodes, I realized that I didn’t want to do it by myself as far as be the only host and bring people in. I think after the other podcast I had, it finally hit me that it was to have somebody play on, bring somebody else in, and actually Brad Williams was my very first host or co-host, and he came in at that time. I think he’d just come out of DradCast, which was an older WordPress podcast that used to be very popular. But yeah, you go back and listen, you look at your logo, you look at a lot of things and you think, oh man,
Ronald (01:45):
How was it to listen to your own voice when you are editing? I can’t stand listening.
BobWP (01:51):
I think I’ve gotten used to it because before even the podcasting, I was doing video tutorials, so it’s never anything I enjoy. It’s like sometimes I think I, does everybody say I have a radio voice because it doesn’t sound that way to me. I think you’re always your worst critic.
Ronald (02:08):
I know it’s a story that’s been said of quite a few times shared by yourself, but why Woo? What was the trigger with Woo that you thought, hang on, we need a podcast just around Woo, and when you started, Woo was known, but it’s not as big as it is now. If you look at some of the statistics, it’s probably installed and powering maybe 4 million stores. There’s quite a significant piece of software.
BobWP (02:30):
Yeah, I think what happened was I had played around with W when it came out, I had known W themes since 2009 or something like that. I got to know the team, so it was always in my playbook. And then when I started doing more tutorials and then over the years I started focusing on WooCommerce more with my tutorials because I just thought, this is a better audience. This is something that seems like has potential growth. So what happened is I had done this one podcast for about a year called WordPress Breakdown. It was my very first podcast and it was a really horrifying podcast. It was like 10, 15 minutes I’d talk about plugins and I just went through the motions and I thought, man, I’m just basically regurgitating what I write about. This is not that exciting. So I eventually stopped and I’m not going to rush to this.
(03:27):
So it was probably a year later I started because of already writing about WooCommerce. I thought nothing’s really talked about to the builders, the developers and stuff, and I thought that seems like a bit more of the audience. So I started to do the Woo way back, what was that, 2016? But then I switched over to WPeCommerce show and did that for two or three years, and then the third year when I was doing that one, I said, man, I got to bring do the Woo back. And it wasn’t necessarily more than a gut feeling that this is what I need to focus on. I dropped the other podcast, I didn’t want to run two of them at the same time, and I just dove head first and I really knew to drill into the builder side of the developers because I felt it wasn’t that they weren’t being served, but I thought I could add another resource and give them another way to hear other developers to learn more. This seemed to be a little disconnected, that developer community. So I was thinking, I can’t solve everything, but I can at least be a part of it.
Ronald (04:38):
Yeah, makes sense. Developers are, it’s a lonely job, usually you and your screen trying to solve problems and hearing from others, other communities and from the other side of the world, how they do it, what solutions they’ve come up, new products are launched, and getting an intro, getting a feel of what’s out there. It is a really good way to get connected and you can do it while you’re driving. You can do it while you’re running. You can do it in all sorts of different ways. In your time. You’ve probably seen lots of podcast startup and lots of them stopped podcasting as well. So obviously that moment of finding that niche, is that the key to be successful and maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on other key factors that makes a podcast successful.
BobWP (05:21):
Yeah, I think the thing is somebody just come to me a week ago and said, I want to start a podcast, Bob, and I know him quite well and he was saying, stop me before I do it type of thing. I said, I’ll tell you how I usually approach somebody. The very first time they say to me, I want to start podcasts. I say, what I will ask you is why do you want to start it? Simple as that. So they’re going to tell me, and I always give the example of a person saying, because I like hearing my own voice, which is not either one of us, and it’s a really bizarre example. So then I say, okay, you got to understand the time you got to put into it and everything. Go ahead and do it. If I can come back to them three, four months later and say, do you still hearing your own voice?
(06:11):
If they say yes, just drills me. Then I think, okay, you’re off to a good start. If they say no, then time to rethink it. So it’s why you’re doing it. And I think for me first it was, okay, I want to do some kind of outreach. I want to try to at least connect that builder community, the developers and the agencies, and that segued into me saying, I want to get the voices out that not everybody’s hearing. And that’s what I love doing is putting voices out there and hearing them get excited about what they’re doing and actually finding that it’s not so bad to be on a podcast. So I think knowing what you’re going to do, you got to be aware of the time you got to commit to it. You don’t want to overthink it.
Ronald (07:02):
Yeah. Can I just pause you down the time you touched on it a little bit with you have to book guests, but quite often I’ve been involved in quite a few of those where we have these pre-recording sessions where we go over the whole thing. What is it like because it’s their first time and I don’t want to mess it up,
(07:19):
It’s also the post-production, the editing, the launching it, advertising it. There’s so much to it just for one single episode,
BobWP (07:28):
And I tell them, that’s what you got to look at. Is this something you’re just doing for the fun of it and you feel like you can get on do the podcast, whether you do it with somebody else, a co-host or with a guest and you just kick out that audio, you don’t do anything more than make sure it’s the end and maybe the beginning and the end is cut off or whatever. Then everything you add you got to think is time the editing, is time the transcript? Are you going to try to do the transcript yourself or edit an automated transcript? So there’s all those things that can add on. How much are you going to get into editing? Are you going to start having guests? Are you going to have various hosts? The more you add on, obviously the more time. But I think with a lot of people at the beginning, you’ve got to just not spend a ton of time on that stuff and just get your feet wet and start seeing if this is something that you even want to do because you can add all that stuff and you can start perfecting that and adding more time onto it.
(08:28):
But if you’re doing that and you’re finding out you don’t like the actual going through the motions of doing that podcast at the time, then why spend all that extra time?
Ronald (08:38):
It’s a lot of admin work, isn’t it? It’s not just Recording and interviews. That’s probably the exciting part of the way you learn something from somebody else. Let’s talk a little bit about the profit and loss, and I’m talking about the losses of equipment.
(08:54):
Come through a lot of different software and different recording software and I’m trying to think the number of mics and other hardware. I know you come all kitted out when you go on location.
BobWP (09:04):
I know.
Ronald (09:05):
And any good or bad memories from that,
BobWP (09:09):
And if you’re a gadget person, it’s really not a good profession to get into because you’re going to find all these cool little things and stuff. For me, it was interesting because before I did podcasting, I did video tutorials, so I found a mic that worked. I went through a lot of mics, I went through those and I think when I started podcasting, I had this one that seemed to work well with video and people used to always say, oh, you sounds so good on that particular mic. So I thought I’ll just keep that. And then at one point I bumped it up to the next level microphone and eventually went to spending a little bit more money on a professional type of microphone. I knew the time I was putting into this, but then I get different mics for travel. Then I have a couple reporter style mics. So depending, again, when people come to me and say, Hey, well I want to get started and what mic should I get? There’s mics out there. You and I have gone through this when you first started doing it, and there’s mics out there. You can start at around a hundred bucks as long as you get something fairly decent and just start with it again, you can always upgrade. You can always find one, and I think that all the equipment can become a rabbit hole. You and I have gone through this ourselves. You wanted to upgrade and set up better stuff and yeah, it’s crazy. And same with software. There’s so many different softwares and over time the software has gotten better.
Ronald (10:41):
Yeah, I’ve heard terrible input throughout an interview and thank goodness, I’m not even sure if that’s going to make it to be a podcast. It sounds terrible. And then I heard just little snippets, not the whole episode of what the result was, and it’s remarkable how software can make up for bad quality mics, But saying that I think a good mike is always the best start for a good sounding,
BobWP (11:09):
Especially if you’re audio only. You got to think your entire focus is on that sound. It’s a little bit different when you have video, you’re going to pay attention to the sound, but you’re so focused on watching the people and what they’re doing and expressions and stuff like that that it’s like watching TV versus listening to radio.
Ronald (11:27):
Yeah. Alright, that’s the loss. Now let’s talk about profit sponsorship. That’s also challenging, isn’t it, to find sponsors? The different packages go big. I’ll go lots with small ones.
BobWP (11:41):
Yeah. When I started podcasting, when I did before I even do the Woo, when I did that WP eCommerce show, I told myself I wasn’t going to do this. I was going to get sponsors straight out of the box. I myself, I had to do it.
(11:55):
Fortunately at that time I had several people, I built relationships, vendors in the space, hosting companies that were willing to come in and support me and help me because they felt confident or they felt it was worth the investment because I’m fortunate because I already had a following. I had built a brand for six, seven years or whatever. Sponsorship’s going to be a tough row. I love it when somebody tells me I’m starting a podcast. Yeah, I want to monetize it, but I want to do that in a way of getting more work. It’s not easy, but you’ve got a little bit less worries there. You can really focus on it, but sponsorships are hard, and as the years go by, you have to get more and more creative with sponsorships if you’re going to go that route, you got to think of customized sponsorships or really going the extra mile for your sponsors. It’s no longer just people just willing to knock on your door and dump money in your lap and it gets tougher and tougher and whether the economy, however that changes, there’s all these factors, so it’s really the least fun part of it.
Ronald (13:05):
I know everybody wants to see a immediate return on investment, sorry, and that’s really difficult when you have worked with awareness branding. So if you speak with the right folks within those companies who get it, you probably have a much better chance than those who go, how many listeners, how many clicks? How many leads can I get out of it? No, you’re talking very different apples and peas. It’s not going to work like that. So in the 400 episodes, have you found maybe a formula, but also maybe there are a couple of episodes that really stood out and thought, wow, I dunno why they went so viral or whether they have big names that they shared. Is it the title? Are there a couple of things that you think I should be able to repeat that maybe it did work, maybe it didn’t work.
BobWP (13:49):
Yeah, I can’t think of a specific one or two, but I know in the past sometimes I do I shake my head at something or if it really doesn’t do that well I think why was that? And I’ll look at every piece and I think there’s so many factors. I don’t know if somebody maybe shared it in their newsletter if there’s a spike or I just didn’t see it visually anywhere. It was like it didn’t make sense because it wasn’t any different. Yeah, it’s crazy because I think maybe some people think there’s ways to do that and sure, get big names on big names and people that go around and beg to be on podcasts. Typically those are the ones that are going to help you promote it more. But those are the people that I consider. It’s great if they’re the kind of people you want on your podcast, but they’re not really who I am always looking for. I’m looking for somebody that’s never been on a podcast, a developer that sits in his or her room and does this eight hours a day and doesn’t really want to communicate with a ton of people. They’re not going to have a huge audience that they’re going to send it out to,
Ronald (14:57):
But they connect most with your audience, so that helps.
BobWP (15:01):
What makes a good show, what doesn’t? I’ve heard other podcasters will say to me, wow, this one really hit the roof. And some of them will honestly, they’ll say, especially in the WordPress space, if they’ve done something around something that’s controversial at the time, will really hit a big spike and that’s human nature unfortunately, and from having done the show for this long, that’s what we try to stay away from, just not our,
Ronald (15:29):
Yeah, it’s not a sustainable, yeah. So going forward, I know looking at the past that’s really easy and analyzing all the things you could have done better and better design logos, that’s done really going forward. Tell us something that you’re working on that you’re excited about.
BobWP (15:48):
A couple months ago I came up with this idea because we are going to be launching the new site in December 1st. I called it a network, but then I realized it’s really a series of shows underneath Do the Woo and we already have, I call it Woo Product Chat, the one you have and the one that Tammy and Jonathan have. Then there’s a developer-centric one agency. We started the one with communities from around the world coming on and speaking in the native language and just talking about the community. Then all these things started snowballing and I thought, well, okay, I have all these shows, but how about some other ones? Something that’s a little bit more generic, WordPress, something that, and you can attest to this. I loved it when we used to have specifically WooCommerce people come on and talk and really be able to do that from the developer advocates and stuff. So I’m thinking of more of an inside Woo that’s specific to that, and once these shows are all put together, I’m putting ’em together, hopefully have ’em in place by next month. Then when we launch, you’ll be able to say, Hey, I like this show, or I want to listen to the agency and the product chat and this one. Or maybe I’m interested in WordPress events. So that opens up more shows and that opens up the possibility of having more one-off guests come on. So I basically give them the platform and they do a podcast, so there’s room for that as well for people to come in and basically play host and have a good time and have a conversation. They could do it interview-wise or more of just a chat back and forth and it’s open source podcast in the sense that I’m letting the community take and run with it, and most times I say, Ronald, this is a person coming on, or you may recommend somebody and it’s your show. I don’t sit there and put a bunch of parameters down. I basically say, you’re the host. This is your show. Do what you want to do with it.
Ronald (17:57):
Yeah, and that’s also part of the interesting site I found collaborating and co-presenting because that’s what I get out of it. I speak with some very interesting people from all sorts and some recordings come out better than others, and that’s also the reason why I don’t like to have the pre-recording chat to keep it organic and I want to know, I want find out. I am curious of the person and the business and the concept of the product that they want to talk about, and that’s nice that you have that platform. It’s almost as you were talking I thought first it’s the Netflix of podcasts. You get into one episode and then the next one that’s themed based on what you like already comes up next because you’re in that sort of swimming lane.
BobWP (18:41):
Just to add to that, and what you were saying is that I’ve found that most of these people that have not had experience on the podcast, and I’m sure you’ve found this as well, that it genuinely turns out better if they don’t prepare or over prepare because I’ve had some in my past podcasts that when I would send out show notes and they would really over prepare and that they weren’t really ready for anything,
Ronald (19:06):
One question and they said the whole thing that they was,
BobWP (19:09):
Yeah, this one poor guy, he was reading it verbatim and he was having the toughest time and he was still starting over and we got through it painful for him, and I thought, I wish he hadn’t even accepted. It really wasn’t his thing, it just didn’t work for him. But I feel like that same person, if that hadn’t happened or I hadn’t given him all that stuff, the conversation would’ve been so much easier for him.
Ronald (19:36):
Yeah, the pre-chat are if we do have them the best and we always say, oh, wish we recorded that. So that’s a really good nugget and you can never repeat that same enthusiasm and excitement as Yeah. What about the ultimate timing or is that sort of irrelevant? Is the 20 minute, is it a half an hour, 45 minute, what’s the sweet spot?
BobWP (19:56):
That’s something I’ve struggled with and the podcast is going to be what it’s going to be. You put it out and you’re going to have listeners or you’re not going to have listeners. If you’ve got good enough conversation going for 45 minutes to an hour, the people that are interested in it will listen. They will, our dev chat every time is with Carl and Zach is an hour and they got to cut themselves off. They know that an hour’s coming up, but they can just go on and on and that’s just been, it’s almost a part of the brand of that show is that they’re going to fill an hour and that’s whether you like it or not, and that’s what you’re going to hear.
Ronald (20:32):
Yeah. I did once with Matt Mullenweg and that was so interesting. It could have gone on for a very long time, but of course there’s a cut off time. So much information you want to ask for him to share and questions to ask that. Yeah, so looking ahead for till the end of this year, are there some key moments coming up people have to look out for?
BobWP (20:54):
Yeah, so you’ll probably start seeing, I’ve already started organizing the shows into these series on the current site. They’re not through a feed, so you can’t subscribe right now separately, but you can click on ’em just through a taxonomy. You can at least see what’s in that specific lineup or however long it’s been going, and so that’s November, December. Obviously before Christmas, somewhere in the first couple of weeks of December we’ll be launching the new site, which is super incredibly exciting. But that’s all I’m going to say. Basically, it’s a huge move for do the Woo and something that I am.
Ronald (21:37):
You’ll be planning for that for a long time and keeping that on the wrap
BobWP (21:41):
And is going to be the design and the feel of it will resonate with this series. You’ll be able to see shows, you’ll be able to see the hosts, learn about each host, give a little bit of background on them and what shows they’ve been on. It’ll just be a way to really drill in on the content you want.
Ronald (21:57):
That’s great. I know I’m looking forward to that. I know from what you’ve shared and what I’ve experienced, that community is growing and people want to interact and they want to follow it. They want to be part of that, and that’s a place that you’ve created. You’ve created that with through iteration of different formats and different, and meeting you’ve how many word camps you’ve been to. I know listeners can’t see it, but I see a tshirt of WordCamp US 2015. You know what people, what sort of topics they come up with when they talk to you. This is fascinating, exciting. Bob, thank you so much. This is actually fantastic just to interview you. I know we talked a lot about it, but it remains fascinating while you’re still here, after 400 shows and all the other podcasts you’ve done is remarkable onto the next 400.
BobWP (22:44):
All right, and we’re trying to think of something very special for episode 500 or celebrating 500, so watch for that. I’m hoping the timing is right and we can do something really cool.
Ronald (22:56):
Nice.
BobWP (22:56):
All right. Thank you, Ronald.
Ronald (22:58):
Thanks.