The Power of the WooCommerce Merchant Community

BobWP: Hey, BobWP here and welcome to Do the Woo, the WooCommerce builder podcast, episode 193. This show is brought to you by ElasticSearch.io from 10up and the StoreBuilder with WPQuickStart over on Nexcess.net.

I will tell you more about our Pod Friends later in the show, but let’s get started as Ronald and Marcus dive behind the scenes at WooCommerce to introduce you to another leadership team member.

Ronald: Hello again, it is Ronald here and today I have my co-host Marcus Burnett with me. Marcus, who do we have joining us as a guest?

Marcus: Hey, thanks Ronald. Happy to be here. Today we have Erika Ellacott, who’s a Merchant Community Advocate from WooCommerce. How are you doing today Erika?

Erika: I’m doing very well. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Ronald: It’s really nice to have you. We’ve spoken a couple of times, so I know a little bit of what you do and what your role is here at WooCommerce. But why don’t you start just giving your full job description? What’s your role and what is your day to day task job list looks like?

Erika: For sure. So my overall focus is to help build our merchant community at WooCommerce. And for me, that really means trying to focus on programs, initiatives, education, sponsorship, I mean, you name it, that’s going to help make our merchant community specifically more successful, make it easier for them to start and grow their own businesses and make it easier for people to connect because that is truly where the magic is, in my opinion, with WooCommerce. And for me, I think that job description you’re constantly building that on a daily basis. And that’s one of the great things, is that no two days look the same here. So it’s open to how we want to grow the program and what we see in store for 2022.

The Merchant community defined

Ronald: Nice. The merchant community, how do you define that? Is that everybody that has a WooCommerce store?

Erika: We’re building that right now to be quite frank. I think the WooCommerce community is traditionally made up of builders. So folks that are building stores or whatever it is. I know you’re very familiar with the builder community. And then merchants, which are going to be more of the store owners that either work with builders and developers to help them get set up or that are building it themselves. And so that’s an area that we traditionally haven’t focused as much on and, I mean, want to take a bigger look at now.

Erika’s work, now and then

Ronald: And who do you work with within WooCommerce who are the departments that support you, or are you pretty much on your own and you have to find your own way in the big machine?

Erika: I’d say it’s both. I sit on the marketing team, which has a wide ride of people from our content marketers and growth marketers. I work really closely with them, but community is a Woo wide initiative. And I think that’s one of the great things. So I may be the only person with that job title, but I work with so many people who have run word camps before who host WooCommerce meetups or who are so ingrained in the community, that they are both WooCommerce and in the WooCommerce community. And so it might be me that is driving the strategy and trying to build some of these initiatives, but what’s great is that so many people want to contribute to that and want to have feedback and want to have a voice in that conversation. So it makes it a little bit less lonely as I build those things.

Ronald: Nice. Where did you come from? What was your previous work experience before you joined Automattic?

Erika: I got started in the tech and entrepreneurship space through events. I love planning events. I have a huge passion for it. I have color coded calendars. I love everything planning and organizing. And so I actually started in an events role with a startup incubator in Kitchener, Ontario, where I’m based in Canada. And so I got introduced into an environment that I had never experienced before, but I got to work with so many software and hardware startups and people that were just taking the initiative to build their own companies. And I just got addicted to that environment from the very start. I think it’s so incredible to meet people who are doing something, It’s so much more difficult in a lot of ways to build something yourself, to be entirely responsible for that.

And so I spend about four years there growing my role into building all of our events in programming for our entire startup program. And from there, I think there was just no looking back when it came to working with entrepreneurs. From that role I moved on to join Shopify actually, where I focused on building local community first in the area where I’m based, and then expanded that to focus on marginalized entrepreneurs specifically. So I worked with building programs, sponsorships events for people that typically face more barriers to starting a business. And so it combined a lot of the things that I loved and I was really good at with the events and partnership side of things.

And then I also got to create an impact and see the work that I was doing and how one event that I was holding could mean so much to an entrepreneur who was struggling with something and now got to talk to people in person and figure that out. So that was a really great journey where I also got to pick up a lot of different skills and build out my toolbox in a way of what I wanted to work on.

And that’s what led me to Automattic because the mission is key for me. I want to be able to see that impact. I want to be able to support people as they do really incredible work. And so that was one of the primary things I was looking for. And then combining that with being able to continue to work with entrepreneurs and see people grow their businesses from setting up a store to making their first sale was just a no-brainer for me. So it’s worked out quite well in my favor.

The ways of connecting with the community

Marcus: That’s awesome. That’s great though. I mean, but not to have physical meetups and events must be really hard for you.

Erika: It is. I think we went to a time with all of this where everyone was like, let’s go online, let’s go virtual. And that just was so draining, but I think we’re going to get to a point, if we haven’t already, where people are so missing that in-person connection that maybe some networking type events that people would get tired of before the pandemic are going to be so in incredibly valuable. Because if we didn’t know it before, we know just how important it is to have those in-person connections where you talk about something random and you never would’ve planned that on a Zoom call or whatever it is. And then you get together and that’s where the magic happens. So I’m really looking forward to WordCamp Europe.

Marcus: That’s cool. I know that events and stuff have been a big part of what you’ve done so far. Are there some other ways that you connect with the community, especially now, like Ronald was mentioning that meetups have been on the back burner for a bit? I know you’ve probably had to pivot a little bit to connect with people outside of just the event space.

Erika: For me personally, I mean, I’m also still relatively new in my role. I’m six months in at Automattic. And so there is so much to learn. There is a never ending list of resources to read and catch up on. So, that still has taken quite a bit of my time. But the great part about that is I’ve been able to do a lot of direct reach outs and have conversations with some of our meetup organizers or folks that are in our community, either one on one or through slack or email or whatever it is.

And so it’s almost like a slower pace has allowed me to be really intentional about trying to get to know folks and understand what they’re pain points are, where we can be a bigger support in the ecosystem and take that time that I need to really build that foundation. We’re still looking at how can we support in-person events as they get back, but it’s also about what tools and resources and education can we create in the long term, because I think, I mean, it might be scary to think about. Who knows how long we’re going to be in this ebb and flow of, can we get together, can we not get together? And so we’ve got to think differently.

The channels used for outreach to the community

Marcus: Seems to keep going back and forth. I know that WordCamp Birmingham was pushed back. So hopefully we can meet back up in person shortly. You’ve mentioned Slack as one of them. Are there other channels that you keep your eye on day to day to just outreach with the community?

Erika: Yeah. So we have a Facebook community, a WooCommerce Facebook Group, that you can join just by going on to the WooCommerce website. There’s a link directly to that. I think we’re well over 45,000 members and what’s incredible is that’s organic and it’s all people that have somehow found it. And I love to just lurk in that channel and see what people talk about and how they help each other. Because in a rational, I guess, state of mind, there’s no reason for anybody to help each other, but everyone does. And it’s someone will post, I’m struggling with this. How do I do this? Does anyone have a plug-in recommendation for doing this? And people jump on it and they get on it right away and there’s comments back and forth. And there’s often a healthy discussion about which one’s better and no you should do it this way, but it’s people that actually care about WooCommerce and about helping others. And I think that’s pretty great.

Ronald: Do you find that really unique? Did you have something similar in, let’s say, Shopify or other eCommerce networks you’ve seen, or is this a WordPress thing that people are keen to help each other?

Erika: That’s why Automattic and WooCommerce are so appealing to me, is I’ve never seen an ecosystem like this and the fact that the origins of WordPress and WooCommerce are community based. And so that’s just a central point to what we do and why we do it. And let’s face it WooCommerce would not exist without the community. So for the work that I’ve done previously, it was a lot of building partnerships with organizations that were helping to support entrepreneurs, or we might do an annual event, but we never worked with a consistent group of entrepreneurs like this. And the meetup program that we have at WooCommerce too is something that I’ve never seen before.

Connecting with communities globally

Ronald: How difficult is it to get your message of what you want to get across, who you are, what you stand for and open to have this discussion? How difficult is it to get that across, or to connect to communities, not just on Facebook, but also other meetup organizations and entrepreneurs and shop owners, maybe on the other side of the world, maybe not speaking English? It must be a huge challenge.

Erika: Definitely. It’s one of those things where you think that you can repeat your message and yell as loud as you possibly can from the rooftops. And that should be enough, but the reality is it’s just something you constantly have to do. And it’s a long term build. I mean, I think anything in community is that long term focus, it’s wanting to be able to build something that is going to last and create opportunities for people in the future. And so you can’t go into it with any immediate ROI expectations. And for this, I think it’s just, you constantly have to be telling people who you are, what you care about, why you’re here and do that in a variety of ways. And so that could be through the Mito program or through some of the other sponsorships or partnerships that we work on or working closely to Do the Woo or being on things like this. So it’s a never ending battle, I think.

Ronald: Are there any other platforms that you have an eye on that you’d like to expand on, whether it’s a social media? Because I can imagine Facebook has its limitations. I’m part of that group, but I don’t ever of see it in my timeline again, because I haven’t interacted with it for some time. I’m a meet up organizer, see some of it and then help organize and maybe that’s about it. So the platforms here have and manage. Is that enough to connect or are there other ways you think we could improve on?

Erika: Definitely, I think there are other ways and things that we need to keep doing to be able to constantly figure out how we can do a better job of connecting people. What those are specifically and what the plan of action is, I am still figuring that out. And that’s a lot of what I want to learn from people that are in the community, is what works, what doesn’t work. And of course I’m going to get a biased response because I’m already talking to people that are in the community and there’s a whole bunch of people that either aren’t active or just, like you said, doesn’t show up on their timeline or they don’t use Facebook anymore, whatever it is. So it’s constantly something that we have to be looking at and figuring out what’s the best way to support our ecosystem. And I think it’s going to be a lot of trial and error and experimenting with new platforms and constantly figuring out what’s going to be the most successful. So I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Ronald: We’re not going to see any TikTok dances by Paul Maiorana anytime soon.

Erika: Maybe if I say it out loud that it will have to happen, but I can say that you won’t see them from me.

Marcus: Commit him to doing it right now.

Ronald: Marcus, do you have any ideas, any suggestions that… TikTok terrible idea though, but any other ways that you think… Well, actually I find it quite a useful way of connecting with customer and merchants. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Connecting with the new emerging community through channels and experience [15:50]

Marcus: I don’t know with TikTok, maybe the answer, maybe it’s not. I think there’s always that challenge of bringing in the next wave, the next group of folks into both, sorry, WordPress and WooCommerce. And so finding the channels where those younger groups are, and being able to be present where they spend their time is going to be critical in getting more and more folks into the ecosystem as they come out of school and are looking to be into the workforce and all of that, figuring out where they are and reaching into those spaces.

Erika: Yes. I’m a big fan of trying to identify other groups or organizations that have common goals and trying to build something together. And so if that means looking into how we can incorporate WooCommerce into educational resource or working with regional business centers in different environments and especially trying to attract folks that typically we don’t see starting as many businesses, then that’s the avenues that I want to explore and see how we can help scale what we’re doing to create impact for different communities, different people and expand that wave.

Ronald: I wish they did that a bit more in education, WordPress and WooCommerce. I’ve spoken to quite a few who have taught their children how to use WordPress. And I’m one of them, my kids have a have their own WooCommerce store, even they tinkering with it. And even if it’s an affiliated link, it doesn’t matter, but they get the concept of actually how easy it is to set up. So using that in skilling systems, open source, this is how you publish something, this is how you create something. And that feeds in the future careers, but also their parents if they say, I’d like to sell something or maybe a craft that I’ve created and being able to sell that online using WordPress WooCommerce. It’s exactly what WordPress stands for, democratizing publishing.

Erika: I posted an event before for kid entrepreneurs specifically, because they have idea is about wanting to sell their designs on t-shirts or wanting to set up a babysitting service or whatever else it may be and why not expose them to something early on, so that maybe they’re not going to start a multimillion dollar business as an 11 year old, but maybe by the time they’re 15, 17, 25, 30, whatever it is, they have that exposure to something and it becomes something that they can feel confident about and not something that just has a barrier to doing.

I mean, starting a business is so incredibly difficult. And so what can we do to make that easier? And that’s something I want to focus on too, is what access can we provide so that it’s less intimidating to open a store? What resources do people need? And I think the community plays a huge role in that because I see it as being something where you’re starting a business and you have no idea what to do next. I want you to be able to turn to a group of people who help you with that instead of you sitting alone in your office or you’re on your couch or whatever it is, and being like, this is too hard. I give up.

Ronald: And of course if you search for something, you very quickly let into the highest paid ads that attract you and they claim it, so super simple to do it. And it might not always be the right way. If you think clicks to install something and sell something, but to really figure out what you want and have all the options presented to you.

Was it for children you created or you organized? Tell me a bit more about that, because that’s really interesting.

Erika: That one was for exactly what you described, a combination of let’s do an activity that can bring families together. Let’s get your children excited. Focus on something creative. And then let’s also bring parents into that ecosystem for something that they can do together, maybe something for them to explore later on. But it was just so cool to see how many kids that a lot of people just write off and not take seriously have business ideas that they want to work towards and build. So it was really fun.

Marcus: How did you promote that? Was that like a local thing that you promoted through schools? I love that idea.

Erika: Yeah. It was local, but I ran it. I connected with a lot of the different, small business associations that we had here. I worked with other tech companies in the area and promoted through them and just tried to spread the word through partnerships that I had built.

Ronald: It’s a great initiative. I think, I see a lot of people who would love to support that because it’s something very rewarding if then that turns into success and years down the line, I said, you remember that workshop and that different things came out from that.

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Now let’s head back to the show

What is being shared with the community

Marcus: When we’re talking about some of the different ways that you connect with the community, what are some of the things that you’re trying to share with those different communities? What are either some of the things that are happening now or coming within WooCommerce and stuff that you’re trying to share with through events or through any of the social spaces and Slack and all that?

Erika: I think that from a product event perspective, we’ll share different initiatives or updates to the product or opportunities for people to give us feedback or participate in surveys, things like that. But then a lot of the time too, I’m trying to build the awareness that WooCommerce is here to be a partner to people and that we are here to help them succeed. And so I think it’s a lot harder of a concept to be able to share and measure as to how well am I doing that, but it’s welcoming people into the slack community when they join and encouraging people to ask questions or share their feedback in Facebook groups and also make sure that it’s an environment that’s open for people to share. And so moderating on the backend and making sure that we can truly live to be an open environment.

And then also, I mean, like I said, for the product side, there is going to be an area that we explore down the road of, how can we do a better job of communicating with people what’s happening now and how they can be a part of that? One of the things with being an open source community and open source product is we do want feedback from people. We want to be able to engage and hear their thoughts. And so we’ll experiment with different things about either posting in a slack channel or in our Facebook group to try to get engagement. And I think we just have to continue to experiment with that, because it is difficult to try to get 45,000 people to want to fill out a survey or whatever it is.

Tips for builders who want to do events or meetups [24:27]

Ronald: For those builders or listeners that maybe been thinking about organizing a meetup or some other community event, or maybe they’ve not been thinking about it at all, what would you say to them? If they struggle with something, what would be the next step for them to do?

Erika: The next step, I would definitely want to talk to them. So reach out to me through the various platforms, which I’m sure we’ll cover in the notes or at the end of the session, but I want to talk to people and I also want to understand what’s holding them back. And so for a lot of people, I mean, I totally get it, hosting a meetup can sound really intimidating. It means, do you have to talk to people? Do you have to plan content? Do you have to market? There are a lot of aspects to it and my focus is going to be, how can I make that easier and more approachable? And so we do have some resources online for content ideas and to give you an overview of formats you could consider and support in that way.

But those are areas that I want to really improve. And that only comes with me talking to as many people as I possibly can to figure out what works, what doesn’t. If we create educational resources that walk you through, how to run a workshop about this, is that something that’s valuable? Is taking a quick 30, 45 minute session that gives you tips and tricks on how to present in front of a group of 30 people, is that helpful? I want to explore just as much as I possibly can. And I think the overall theme of all of this is I’m trying to learn as much as I possibly can, experiment with whatever I can get my hands on and get as much feedback as possible.

Ronald: Some people are employed by big companies and they get sponsored to organize meetups, but there are individuals who may be freelancers and don’t have so much time. Do you have some feedback from meetup organizers of what they get out of it? And even if you put in a couple hours a week or so, it’s not dedicating your time, but you also get something back. Do you have some thought in that, some ideas or feedback from others?

Erika: Yeah. From what I’ve heard and speaking to organizers, the intrinsic value that you get out of it is why they do it. I mean, you are volunteering your time. There is a lot that goes into it. And so the meetup for organizers that we have, I think, are so incredible because they put that extra effort in when they have lives and jobs and friends and commitments and very little spare time.

One organizer was saying that he got involved in the WooCommerce meetup community, met a bunch of people that way and ended up landing a job a few years later. And so that’s not something that you ever go into, I’m going to join this meetup group because I’m going to get a job out of it in six months. But there are all these amazing benefits that come out of it that you just can’t plan for. And at the same time, I mean, that’s really hard to communicate to people and something that we need to do a better job also in a way that doesn’t sound like this magical story where we’re trying to say, if you join a meetup, all of your dreams will come true and you’ll get a job out of it. And your business will hit X number of revenue, or whatever you’re looking for.

Ronald: It’s true that you can get a lot it out of it with just meeting people and you never know where that leads you to the next opportunity or connection or, well, indeed job. Marcus, do you have any experience with meetup organizing and get unexpected feedback or you see people suddenly flourishing? Is anything encouraging you can give to those who are thinking about it?

Marcus: I haven’t done a ton of meetup organizing, but I’ve presented a few times, which has created opportunities as well.

And just not knowing where the opportunities are going to come from, you just have to make yourself a available. For me, I feel like the meetup about the meetup and the Facebook group and the slack and all that is like that, take a penny, leave a penny jar. You want to leave some, and that way when you’re looking for answers to questions, then there are people around that can answer your questions because you’ve put in the work, you have answered other people’s questions, and, or you’ve presented, so now when a meetup is coming there are other presenters who can follow and do their own presentations and you can learn from them. So it’s all that give and take. And the more people give, the more that you’re going to get out of it all around.

Erika: That’s a great point.

Ronald: The speaking aspect and also building up your confidence to speak in public. I think sometimes presenting a hosting instead of the middle way where you can build up that confidence because you’re not maybe presenting a topic, but you’re connecting, you’re introducing. So for confidence building, it’s a great way to include yourself into meetups and put yourself forward.

Erika: And no safer place too. I mean, everyone that I’ve ever encountered in the WooCommerce community, or even through Automattic, has always been so friendly, encouraging and makes you feel like mistakes are okay. You can be yourself. And so speaking is very, very difficult and not something that anybody gets right on the first try or the 10th try. And so it is a great place, I think, where you can have an environment that makes you feel that you can practice and you can make mistakes and people are going to give you feedback because they genuinely care and they want you to see you do better.

What a day looks like for Erika

Ronald: Nice. We have established that you are uber organized with color coded calendars and all sorts of stuff. So I’m guessing it’s not difficult for you to motivate yourself to get started and do everything you need to. Do you have any tips? Do you have a routine? What’s your day looks like?

Erika: Whenever the team around me is asked about what’s your biggest strength, I always get organized back because I love, like you said, the color coded calendar. I try to write out my to-do list every day or on a weekly basis, at least. And that doesn’t mean that it’s not hard to motivate myself sometimes. I think when I have a project that I can clearly see in my mind and just start knocking off tasks and focus more on execution than I can really get moving on it. But some of the bigger picture thinking and strategy work is harder for me to do because I like being able to talk to people and bounce ideas off of them. Even just talk it out to myself. And working in a distributed environment, the only person I’m really bouncing ideas off of is myself and my office walls.

I don’t get a whole lot of feedback from that, unfortunately. And so luckily I have a team that is always wanting to give feedback and support me through that process, which is great. But my day to day can be… I think it’s right now. It’s a lot of that strategy focus work. As a team, we’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months working on our 2022 plans and how we really want to ramp up this year and what our focuses are. So it has been a lot of that work and I’ve been very antsy to get into some of the projects that I’m excited to do. So I think that switch is about to happen. But my day to day is always different. Lately it starts with a Wordle. Our team has pretty well gone head first into the Wordle environment and we compare Wordles every day. So that is…

Ronald: I haven’t started with it. I’m worried now because I see everybody so addictive to it. Have you, Marcus? Do you start your day with Wordle?

Marcus: I usually finish the day with Wordle because if I don’t get it, it stresses me out all day long. So I have to wait till the end of the day, but that poses the issue of not having it ruined for you on Twitter or elsewhere.

Erika: That’s true. I mean, of course our team works on all different time zones because we’ve got people all over the country. All over the world, but so it’s a variety of people trickling through sharing their Wordles and talking about either how hard it was or how they got it in two or three and got lucky. It’s always a fun bit of entertainment, at least for us right now.

The specific values that come for developers via the Merchant community

Marcus: Your title is a Merchant Community Advocate, but I want to ask if there are some other benefits as well to some of the builders and developers in those communities. What things can maybe builders and developers get from paying attention to and participating in the merchant community?

Erika: I think one of the great things is that while we might call it certain group of people in the environment merchants and some builders. I think there is that entrepreneurial, I guess, trait amongst everybody. And so you may be a builder, but you’re also building your own business. You are for clients, you’re building plug-ins, you’re doing whatever it is, but there is that aspect. And so I think that, especially in early days, a lot of the things that we do are going to be applicable to the whole community. And if that means joining in some of these future workshops or events that we create, so that filters can get a better idea of what merchants are struggling with and how they can create either opportunities or things that are going to help support them.

Erika: Then I think that that’s going to be super valuable. It also gives them an opportunity to expand their network. And if you are looking for clients and you want to help build a store, then that’s going to be a great area for you to be raising your profile and speaking at meetups or answering questions in the communities when people have them. That’s not to say that anyone should go into these communities and just start looking for clients, because that’s definitely not the atmosphere that we create. But I think that there can only be benefits from that cross pollination of people who are on the store owner side and wanting to build a business, and the builder side and wanting to support that. And so I think that anything that we do is not going to be just for one group, but my role is to try to think about how we can better support those merchants.

Ronald: Personally, I find it a great tool to engage in meetups as a market research and figuring out what terminology people use, what are their struggles and not everything useful. But sometimes things play in your mind and you use it for a latest… Maybe it’s writing a blog post and visualizing real life example or something that people are struggled with. And I find it very useful. So I can relate a little bit to that.

Erika’s hands-on experience with WooCommerce

Marcus: Just digging in a little bit more on your past, have you used WooCommerce for a store and sold something yourself or run a store? What things did you sell if you did?

Erika: I haven’t run my own WooCommerce store. In my first role at the startup incubator, we did use WordPress for our website. And so I got a tiny little bit into that and playing around with that. But when I was going through my onboarding, I created my own WooCommerce store as part of that experience, so that I could know what people were talking about when they were submitting support tickets and so on. And I created my own bakery because I think that if I was ever going to open my own business, it would be a bakery. And I have to admit that I spent a little too much time trying to create my store and upload my product photos and create the perfect description and do all of that, then I actually did in the answering support tickets. So if we could just keep that between us, that would be great.

But I have that WooCommerce store that I like to play around with. And it gets really fun. I mean, yes, there are hard parts to it because that’s starting a business, no matter what you do, but I’m like, which product photo should I choose here? Should it rotate through this? What fonts do I want? What theme? So it gets a little fun to play around with.

Ronald: A bakery. Wow. I’m so hungry now actually.

Differences between the Shopify and WooCommerce communities

Marcus: You said you were at Shopify before, what are some of maybe the differences, I guess, maybe you could talk a little bit about the community’s difference between Shopify and WooCommerce.

Erika: From what I’ve experienced, I think the way that each company approaches community is different. At Shopify, I was primarily focused on building partnerships and relationships that were going to help us support the demographics and the audiences that we wanted through those organizations. And so we built relationships with groups that we were going to be able to see the impact that we wanted through. And I think with WooCommerce, we have a direct relationship with our community in a lot of ways through the various channels that we have, but when it comes to feedback and talking just one on one with people that use the platform all the time. And so it’s cultivating more of those direct relationships on the Woo side and working, I mean, in the community that we are building and working directly with our users, which is not something that we had as much exposure to at Shopify.

Challenges in the ecosystem that developers can address for merchants

Marcus: That makes sense. Speaking of the merchants in the WooCommerce community and having those direct relationships with them, what do you think are some of the main challenges that they’re currently facing that we can try to address as the WooCommerce or plug-in developers in the ecosystem?

Erika: I think from what I’ve heard and seen, it’s simplifying. People have so little time in the day and I’ve seen comments from people in our Facebook group about, they don’t have enough time, they don’t have enough money, they need to make this work. And so it’s trying to figure out how can we make it as easy and accessible as possible. And so my assumption has always been that people don’t start a business because they want to learn about SEO or they want to learn about the resolution of their product photos or any of that stuff. They start a business because they’re passionate about it. And so if we can let them focus on what they truly care about and what they want to put their energy into and simplify everything else, then I know that that’s a very long list, but that’s what I believe is going to help entrepreneurs and stores and anyone be more successful.

And so I think my approach to that, because I’m not a technical person, I don’t work on product or any of that, but my approach is what educational resources and tools can I make so that you know where to go when you are struggling with those things. And make it so that it’s less scary when you approach it, because it can be pretty intimidating no matter what you’re using to start a store, to start a business, that’s just mentally, a big risk and a big jump to have to make.

Ronald: And time is so precious. I mean, like you said, no one’s just starting a business, their first is let me spend 20 hours learning SEO and how to make my site show up better in search engine results and all of that. That time is so precious for them to be doing other things. So that makes total sense.

Erika: Especially for people that are makers or artists or creating their product themselves, that’s 20 hours of time that they could be putting into their product to building the whole other side of the business. We can’t do that part for them. WooCommerce cannot go in and sit with them and paint with them or operate a service with them. So what can we do to make the other, the rest of it easier?

Ronald: You want to at least expect WooCommerce or WordPress to do that out of the box on a basic level. And then you can always optimize at a later stage, which I think it does all right. It’s really nice to hear from you and how you have been so busy behind the scenes trying to figure out where everybody’s hiding and how to connect them and bring them together. I still think that the in-person events is going to be the big differentiator because not just meeting, but it’s also talking about it and the connections and the publicity and the social around it that makes people realize that it’s not just a software. It’s not just a plug-in, it’s… There’s a lot more behind it. There are speakers, there’s a whole community, an ecosystem that runs it. There are meetups. It’s a huge thing. I think in 2021, $31 billion transaction through WooCommerce. I don’t know how that compares to some smaller countries in the world, but that’s pretty big, I think.

Erika: It’s pretty significant and to use community for the millionth of time, it’s a collective community of people who care and are working towards similar things. So, that in-person is where the magic happens. There are things that you just don’t talk about on a Zoom because it’s so structured in a lot of ways, but people are going to get together and start having conversations and getting to know each other in a way. And that is the beauty of WooCommerce, is that it’s not just a platform, it’s not a product. It is an ecosystem. It is a partner in your business in a variety of ways.

Marcus: I can’t wait until we can get back to doing that.

Ronald: Finally get to meet you too, as well. Erika, how can people get in touch with you? And of course, all those who are thinking about organizing meetups and getting more involved in the community.

Erika: Sure. So there are a bunch of ways. If you want to join our Slack community, if you Google WooCommerce slack and find that through our.com page, then you can join there and reach me at Erika Ellacott in Slack. You can also find me on LinkedIn at again, Erika Ellacott. And then through email too. If you want to reach out and chat, I’m always happy to have conversations with people and just learn about their experiences, their thoughts, and build that relationship. So that’s E-R-I-K-A dot E-L-L-A-C-O-T-T@automattic.com.

Ronald: That’s great. Well, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story and experience and what to expect for 2022.

Erika: Thank you so much.

BobWP: Hey everyone, thanks again for tuning in to today’s show. I would like to give one more shoutout to our two Pod friends. Any shop customer will be happier with a solid search on the store, and ElasticPress.io from 10up has that solution for you. And for that store build, make it easy using the StoreBuilder with WPQuickStart from Nexcess.net. And make sure to follow us either on Twitter, on the podcast here or on DotheWoo.io or on your favorite podcast app. Until the next time.