2:1 Build Stuff People Care About

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Lee:

Hi, and welcome to the WP Innovator podcast, the WordPress podcast for design and web agencies. Let's make WordPress work for your business. Hi, and welcome to the WP Innovator podcast. This is your host, Lee Jackson. And today we interview Matt Newton from the Web Agency podcast. We're going to discover behind the scenes of his niche website business focused on the tourism industry, where he has produced websites using WordPress Multisite. Matt has many amazing stories, both of his business and of his travels. So without further ado, let's kick off. But first, a short word from our sponsor. The WP Innovator podcast is sponsored by SociPress, the world's first set and forget Twitter solution for WordPress. Share and re share your valuable content as well as receive feeds from top influencers in your industry. Go and check out Social Press for WordPress today on lejacksondev.com plug in. Use the code podcast for a 10 % discount. Hi, this is Lee at the WP Innovator podcast. And today I have with me the one and only Matt Newton from Tourism Tiger fame. And most of you will probably know him from the Web Agency podcast. 

Lee:

Hi, mate. How are you doing?

Matt Newton:

Hey, Lee. I'm very good. How are you?

Lee:

I'm all right. Haley is a girl's name, by the way, just for the record.

Matt Newton:

That was like subliminal, man. I was trying to pay you a compliment, actually. That's right. All these people out there making those assumptions about calling you a girl and making an insult, it's actually not. Don't judge so quickly. Awesome.

Lee:

Well, Matt is a guy I've... It's funny. Matt had me on his podcast a few weeks ago, which was an absolute honour, especially because I've spent probably the last six months to a year listening to this guy, having this guy in my ear at weekends on long drives.

Matt Newton:

He's got this. And also at the same time, you're listening to my podcast too, sir. I was in your ear on one side. It's creeping you out. And the other side, you're listening to my podcast.

Lee:

It was a little awkward at times. But when he wasn't whispering into my ear, it was the Web Agency podcast, which is on the webagencypodcast.com. He's run a podcast for the last, I think it's two or three years now, mate, is it?

Matt Newton:

Yeah.

Lee:

About two or three years. He doesn't look old enough from his picture, but it's been about two years. And he's got a podcast online that is focused specifically on design agencies, freelancers, web developers, etc. And the calibre of guests he's had on there, including myself, obviously, is very high and they are always dropping really good value bombs all the time, to coin a phrase. But also it's all very specialised. So it was great fun to be on the podcast and Matt's reciprocated. And he's here to share the benefits of his wisdom that he's gained over the years. But he's also got a really cool model as well of selling websites, which I know everybody's going to be really interested in. And that's the Tourism Tiger model as well, which I'm going to get into explain in a minute. So before we do crack on, mate, do you want to just say hi, give people a little bit of a background about who you are, better than My Ramblings and all that jazz?

Matt Newton:

Yeah, it's funny. Actually, talking about this new model I get probably 50 to 100 people a month coming to my website via articles or written. I end up on these listicles that pop up around the place. Product is web design businesses. And yeah, it's something that seems to be interesting to people. I'm from Tourism Tiger. We do websites for tour and activity operators. We do it in a highly systemized fashion. Often I use McDonald's as an analogy. Mcdonald's designs the burger at head office and it gets built at the store. So we have a slightly similar model like the expertise. The expertise goes into designing the overall system as opposed to designing an individual website. So that process enables us to do it for a lot cheaper but also more effectively because we focus really heavily on one niche and that enables us to have insights that would have taken us one year to develop after working in tourism. So that means that the tour operators that work with us, they pay less money and they get a more effective website, so everyone wins.

Lee:

That's awesome. And you're learning it, presumably as well, from the different websites that you've got going on there. You're learning from the activity and the things that those guys are getting up to. So you can then apply that to new people who come along to your website... Sorry, to your service.

Matt Newton:

Yeah, exactly. And you meet people in the industry as well and they teach you new stuff and you just follow blogs in industry about how people ran this test and that test and all that stuff. Following a whole bunch of really specialised industry resources and having those chats has enabled us to really gradually have realisations. The types of realizations that only come after you've peeled away layer after layer of initial learnings, if that makes sense. So in this year, we're going to be implementing some of the stuff that booking.com and expedite.com has implemented. So we're going to be getting to some pretty high level stuff, the stuff that only to this point, multimillion dollar businesses have had access to. Now our customer is going to have access to it. So we're really excited about that.

Lee:

Well, that's already blown my mind as a regular holiday booker. I know how complicated those systems are and I'm glad I'm not the developer behind that. So if you're offering that to your clients, I bet they're going nuts over it. That's amazing, mate.

Matt Newton:

Well, that's the thing about running. We run it as a product, if that makes sense. So a lot of people that run product types of web design, they fall into a trap of not running it as a product. So obviously, if you run a software company, someone requests a feature, you treat it as a feature request. But web design product types of service people, they don't realize that someone's requesting a feature. So basically, we treat them as feature request. So basically, if a customization happens to the system, it happens to the system, not to their website. So I'm not talking about colors or fonts. I'm talking about feature changes. And that makes it way easier for us to maintain the whole system and be robust and all that stuff.

Lee:

And what was it that got you into the tourism world? Was it any personal passion of yours, for example?

Matt Newton:

Yeah, it's funny. I used to be a tourism marketing consultant, but I arrived at this idea independently of tourism. So basically, I just had this idea come along of how amazing would it be to pick one small business niche and just learn lessons over time and everyone pays a monthly fee and we just apply lessons and we do conversion rate optimization testing, conversion rate testing, I should say, as a cohort. So obviously small business don't have the traffic as resources to do it. But if they can become part of a bigger cohort of really similar businesses, it's possible, at least I hope. And I thought, man, that'd be so amazing. I would so love to sign up for that. I got really excited. I was like, all right, let's pick the small business niche. I was like, I'm going to plug. I'm going to give it all my advice. It's going to be amazing. And I googled it. I was like, Okay, so how do I pick a niche? How do I pick a niche? How would I pick a niche? What's the list of the businesses who make the most profits? So I googled this and number one on the list was accountants.

Matt Newton:

I'm like, all right, so it's going to be accountants. I'd go and find a bunch of blogs about how to increase your accounting business. And I was like, I was like falling asleep by the way. If there's one thing I've learned is that you can't... If you're going to do content marketing, if you're going to go into business, you got to have a spark that actually keeps you going, if that makes sense. You can't just be for the money. I've learned that the hard way. You have to be naturally interested in solving the problem because that natural interest just means you have to motivate yourself a lot less because it just comes naturally. So I went through that list and there was lawyers and doctors and dentists and vets and all that stuff. But I was like, I'm going to screw that way of thinking and just think, Okay, so what do I have experience here and what am I interested in? I was like, Well, I definitely have experience with tourism businesses and I definitely am interested in the problems they have. I did a bit of looking around and I was like, Man, I could easily write 50 to 100 blog topics just right now.

Matt Newton:

Obviously, one piece of advice is don't start a blog if you can't literally sit down and write 50 topics off the top of your head. In my case, it was so easy. I was like, All right, let's do it. Let's go. So I decided to pick tool and activities first, despite the fact that in many ways is not an optimal niche because they don't have a huge amount of money in many of the businesses. But hey, like I said, I picked it for the interest and we've been going from there.

Lee:

That's amazing. That's a great story as well. And it's so important, isn't it, to pick on a passion rather than trying to do something you're not passionate about. It's really hard to force it. But when you're passionate, it's like me with WordPress. I use WordPress all the time, but I don't just use it as a business tool. I freaking well geek out in an evening whilst we're all watching TV, installing new plugins, writing stuff just for this sake of it. I think that makes me like an Uber nerd rather than a geek.

Matt Newton:

I'm actually I'm totally confused about the difference. I've tried to educate myself on this. I'm just.

Lee:

Decided to... I think a geek is able to get married, probably, and have a life. And then maybe a nerd has never got out the door. I don't know. Actually, maybe people could write in and let us know the differentiation. I'm never sure. I always feel conflicted. I need help.

Matt Newton:

I won't tell anyone about these issues.

Lee:

Just between you and me.

Matt Newton:

Yeah, me and you and the millions of listeners.

Lee:

Well, it'd be nice to have millions at some point. That'd be awesome.

Matt Newton:

You'll get there, Lee. I believe in you, man.

Lee:

Thank you. I feel like I should cry a little bit now. That was beautiful. That's really exciting. The idea as well of focusing in on features as well, I thought that was really interesting. When people come up to you and say, How could you change this to do it this way to match my business process? Because I think it would be great. Actually, you're coming at this saying, Okay, sounds good, but is there a real business case for this particular feature or this particular workflow? And if you can see the benefit and if other people within your group, as in your users are saying, Yeah, this is what we want, then you can answer that need and start to develop it. So it's like a validation, isn't it, of things before you have to build.

Matt Newton:

So we basically have three types of changes we'll make. The first one is the business case, one where there's an obvious business case for doing it, which haven't got around to it yet because we have a big list of shit we need to get to. The next one is where there's always business case for us. So in the sense of it may not have any obvious impact to them, but it will help us sell the service a bit better. And that in the end actually helps solve the customer problems because it helps assign more people up to solve their problems. It's a bit of a roundabout way, but I genuinely believe that a tool operator is better off with us than anyone else. So anything I can use, even if it's just a bill on a whistle to convince them and doesn't hurt their business, fine. The next one is just a tiny little change. It's easy to make and it'll keep them happy. I just do it and it won't cause any major changes to the system. And the last type of change that we won't make is the one where the business case is not there.

Lee:

Yeah. Which is no change at all. I like it. Did you say that you would code in a whistle if someone asked for it? No.

Matt Newton:

Well, I was.

Lee:

Going to say I'd love.

Matt Newton:

To see that. Well, I wouldn't do that particularly, but I just mean people asking for random bells and whistles.

Lee:

Oh, I get you. I was trying to work that one out. I was like, Yeah.

Matt Newton:

For example, we have a few customers with blogs and one of them requested a certain thing to be able to do certain thing with the images and we looked into it and it's literally three words of code or something. Not even a line, half a line. So we just did that. So it's fine.

Lee:

Yeah, that's awesome. And actually, perfectly time overlapping in the background as well. So just before we started recording, Matt was explaining that there's some meeting or presentations going on in the next room. So if you hear random applause, they may or may not be for Matt with the awesome stuff that he's sharing today.

Matt Newton:

So far, zero for five.

Lee:

Well, I feel like applauding, but I think I'd be really loud down this microphone. This is great. So far, we've got an amazing insight already into Tourism Tiger, which is super exciting. Me and some guys about eight years ago did a similar model. It still runs. They're still running that system now, which was targeted at the event sector. That's event and exhibition organizers based on WordPress Multisite, similar model. Then we had one or two standard themes and standard products, et cetera. That still runs nowadays as quite a good model. And again, the same as you, it's had that advantage of getting people using it, getting their feedback, and then creating features based on needs, et cetera. If you're listening and this is piquing your interest, go and check out tourismtiger.com. It's an amazing way of building websites and creating epic value based on real business cases, etc. There you go. There's your tag line for the future, mate.

Matt Newton:

So we're gradually getting there. The first website we launched, I was embarrassed to show it to people.

Lee:

Really?

Matt Newton:

It was funny because it was based on our research. So a lot of his sales went up a bunch. So at least we helped them that way. But I was embarrassed to show it to people because it wasn't that good looking. But because we have this product mentality, we're gradually evolving and gradually evolving. Now we're at pretty decent levels. And within the next year, we're going to be at bloody amazing. So that ability to be.

Lee:

I can see that on your chart right now. You know those charts that are on the board? You got pretty decent, then you got target bloody amazing. And the fact.

Matt Newton:

That we, on an ongoing basis, improve our customer websites, it takes a load off my shoulders. I can look at it and stuff, I'm like, You're not perfect yet, but you're going to be. You're going to be.

Lee:

I guess the beauty of that is as well, mate, that you're saying that you're improving on clients websites. It's one code base. So if you're adding a feature, you're going to add it in once. You can distribute, presumably, some how to information to everybody, and everybody gets the value of that. And in return, you're getting monthly revenue. You're not trying to balance multiple complicated projects back to back all the time because that's one thing I know a lot of agencies are dealing with. Every single web build, even if it's in WordPress, is like a from scratch. Here's the new product brief, here's the six month project timeline. Everyone Cody butts off stressful times, manages to deliver two months late, all goes live, and then everyone collapses before the next one kicks off. Whereas, again, this model is you're adding in these features and everyone benefits for a really good price as well. A monthly cost.

Matt Newton:

It's too low. Yeah, it is too low. But yeah, it's just like this thing you just talked about does seem attractive in a certain way. These big, intense projects, but just obviously the type of business you want to start. You want to make sure it aligns with the goals, right, and the lifestyle you want to have and stuff like that. Absolutely. That's a big factor.

Lee:

That's awesome. I get the impression from your websites as well that you...

Matt Newton:

I think about design, you are correct.

Lee:

No, this is totally incorrect because I think that's probably just that this is in a critical person in you, like any designer in the world, who is never happy with anything they produce.

Matt Newton:

In this case, I'm actually not a designer, but I do have... I'm the product manager, so to speak, if that makes sense. But the good news is we have a full time designer starting with us in a week. It's crazy. I run a design company and I haven't had a full time designer.

Lee:

I think I heard perfectly time collapse there as well, but that's amazing, mate.

Matt Newton:

That was an ironic applause, actually. Well.

Lee:

What I was going to say is not that you're a bad designer because I actually love your website and I love your logo. But I get the impression you're a well traveled guy, especially from the description of you by Ben on your podcast. Is that stemming from something like the four hour work week, not saying you work only four hours, but that travel lifestyle of running a business and traveling the world?

Matt Newton:

Yes. Four hour work week. Sorry, four hour work week was a big part of it. Obviously, this huge influence on so many people. I was like, Yeah, I'm going to... Basically, I just started out from a point of I wanted to be successful in a very lazy way. Gradually having that laziness just beaten out of me by life. I want to start web science where I didn't have to do basically any work. I could just set them up and just sit back and just real in the money while doing shitty SEO. That's where I was at. Then it just gradually evolved from there and then I did okay. I had a few websites that made a decent amount of money because basically after making a lot of shitty ad sense websites, I made a couple of really good ones which were actually legitimately good. Had our own little marketing consultant thing when I was doing online marketing consulting for 10 hours a week. In between those two things, I made a pretty healthy living. I've lived in a few countries such as Egypt, Thailand, Germany, Spain, and a few others. It's been a super interesting journey.

Matt Newton:

I think it's part of the reason why I chose the business model I did now. I wanted to keep the good times rolling.

Lee:

The only reason that prompted me was because you were saying when you're starting a business, if you think about what's the lifestyle you want to lead, and I definitely got that impression. Other than being ruggedly handsome and a cricket fanatic, I figured you were also an avid traveler, and that had been part of the reason behind the product selection or the way you've marketed this product. It's well cool, man. Well cool. Did you ever get to go to sunny old England as well in your travels?

Matt Newton:

I did because I was in Germany and my 90 day Schengen zone visa ran out. So basically, as a way of explanation, if you're not from Europe and you're from a country that gets an instant visa to Europe, you can only spend 90 days in this group of 20 countries. It's insane. So most countries, obviously, you get a visa for that country. You more like get a visa for the entire Western Europe. Run out of that time, went to England while I applied for a proper visa. So basically just just bided my time. Just waiting till I could leave again. But I did have a very nice time in London.

Lee:

No, it's expensive down in London.

Matt Newton:

Oh, dude, man. Yes. But London is really nice. The one thing I have discovered is that there are a whole bunch of really awesome places in the world.

Lee:

Totally. And you're making me stare dreamily into space as I imagine taking my family and traveling. It's exactly the way I want to go.

Matt Newton:

Before you dream too much. You develop some nice stories, but you also developed some pretty crazy ones. I've seen someone get shot. I've had someone fire a gun in anger literally about five metres away from where I was standing. I've walked straight into multiple riots. This made some interesting experiences, but it's all been part of the fun. But I think in terms of taking kids and stuff, I would say probably don't take them to Egypt, especially when it's in the middle of unrest. That's probably the best way to avoid a lot of this stuff. But a lot of it you just can't avoid. I'm in Chile right now and probably the safest, most stable, best run. Every single good adjunctive you can probably apply to a country in terms of its government. It deserves that one for Latin America. Even then, my third day here, that was when I saw someone get shot. It's one of those things you just bite the bullet, pull the trigger, so to speak. It's funny, I was just used to one metaphor.

Lee:

Two puns.

Matt Newton:

Related to shooting people, you bite the bullet, pull the trigger.

Lee:

I was waiting for the applause in the background.

Matt Newton:

They're a bit slow and they have to take these guys. English is second language thing.

Lee:

Well, thankfully, I've got a wife who's very nervous about the idea of traveling to anywhere that she would deem as unsafe. So we've only got a safe zone list.

Matt Newton:

Yeah. All right. So before we get back onto the topic, this safe zone thing bugs me to no end. An American guy the other day told me he doesn't want to go to Germany because it's unsafe.

Lee:

I've never heard of that.

Matt Newton:

That's nuts. Because it could be the case that this Islamic state is looking to do an attack. That applies, which leads to pretty much every country in the Western world. Then, oh, man, you have this thing where you're in Colombia, for example, which a lot of people see as a dangerous place, and you talk about Egypt and people are like, oh, man, isn't that really dangerous? You're like, Yeah, but Columbia is also meant to be really dangerous. They're like, Oh, yeah. The thing is I was hanging out with two people from Salvador, which is the murder capital of the world pretty much. It's really digging it out for the top spot. A country of 6 million people where they had literally one day not too long ago where they had 18 murders in one day. No way. And trying to two people from there and they don't experience or live at all because they live in a nice, reasonably comfortable area. Where I live in San Diego, this is the North Eastern corner of San Diego is literally first world. Not living in the first world or somewhat living in the first world.

Matt Newton:

It is first world, like full stop. You'll see just as many poor people as you will in a rich country, in one of the richest cities in a rich country. There's safe zones and then there's also just incorrect perceptions. you know?

Lee:

Anyway. No, that's really good. I like it. I've never heard of someone thinking Germany was too risky.

Matt Newton:

Yeah, everyone's got their own perceptions. When I told my dad I was going to move to Egypt, he was like, Matt, I know that's not true because I know you would never be that stupid. I was like, Well, I've actually bought the ticket and I'm leaving a week. And that's what's happening.

Lee:

Mic drop.

Matt Newton:

Yeah, boom.

Lee:

That's awesome, man.

Matt Newton:

Well.

Lee:

Mind blown already. We're 20 minutes in and it's absolutely fascinating learning about you, your business. Here's a question for you then. With the travel, with the Tourism Tiger model or anything like that, what's been the biggest challenge to your business so far, mate?

Matt Newton:

It has been tough. Initially, it was tough as well. And I would say the biggest challenge has been getting a reputation completely through the internet. So not having any local networks to depend on, not having any real local meet ups that I could rely on, or any initial customer base that I could transfer into this or anything like that.

Lee:

Yeah. Wow. I'm just picturing myself in a world without my network, and where would I start?

Matt Newton:

Imagine, yes, starting from scratch. I'll tell you how I started. I wrote a book. I wrote a lot of blog posts just to get started. And then I went crazy tweeting out people in our industry. One of the good things about our industry, actually, one of the good things and bad things, but good in this circumstance, was that no one shares anyone else's stuff. They share their own stuff. So if you go share someone else's stuff three times, you are literally the only person that's ever done that. And you're their.

Lee:

New best friend.

Matt Newton:

Yeah, exactly. They notice it.

Lee:

Yeah

Matt Newton:

And That's That.

Lee:

Hey, here's something just off subject that I've learned over the last two months, so you'll notice on my Twitter feed as well. When people who are my target audience will follow me on Twitter or they like something, I'll actually do a video for them, a personalised video, like 14 seconds tops, saying hi to them and I'll just put, Hey, @whatever their handle is. From that, I've got so much response. People emailing, people following back if they've not followed already, or then people starting to engage with other content of mine just by doing that. That was a tip from our guest last week, Sarah Moore. She's actually my social media adviser as well. I'd never thought of that until recently, just those little video messages. Takes about 12 to 14 seconds of my time. I only have to do it maybe once or twice a day when someone who I'm like, Oh, yeah, there's someone I need to connect with. There's synergy, quote unquote. I hate that word, but I'll use it now. Yeah, I hate it. I need to talk to that person. So I'm going to break up their notification feed with a video that auto plays.

Lee:

It's going to catch their eye. So, hey.

Matt Newton:

I guess I should wait on my video, huh?

Lee:

Get on your video and say hi to a few people.

Matt Newton:

Yeah. So wait, honestly, 12 seconds, really? 

Lee:

Well, I think that's all you're allowed. I think you're allowed to upload about 12 seconds or so of video to Twitter. I might be totally wrong in this, but last time I tried to upload anything longer, it was telling me to trim it. Okay. Plus, I mean, 12 seconds is easy to commit to anyway. It's like a quick high. I'm not even selling at them. I'm just saying, Hey, like something on your... I noticed this tweet, hilarious, going to share it, whatever I got to say on it. It's not even in a salesy... Because I want to sell it people. I just want to connect with people that look interesting and stuff will happen from there. Just building the network. But yeah, about 12 seconds, I think you're allowed. If you do a YouTube video or something, I don't think that auto plays. Whereas if you're uploading just a small MP4 file of you on your phone, just waving hello, job done, you're going to catch their attention. Pretty cool. There you go. Top tip.

Matt Newton:

I'm going to pass that to our marketing manager right now.

Lee:

There you are. You've learned something today, mate. Hey, so here's another big question for you then. What one thing or idea or maybe a product, I don't know, has been a complete game changer for you and your business? That's a big question, broad question.

Matt Newton:

It is. So obviously, I would say one of the biggest game changer for me was I went through this process of trying to build businesses that were focused just around the lifestyle that I wanted to have and the goals that I had for what I wanted to do. I got into this really big funk in Berlin. When I was living there, I just quit all my projects, went on all of them. But just realised I had two projects that flame out in a really bad way and just realised that no one cared about them. I'd done so much work and not one person the world cared. I was like, From now on, I'm going to build something, stuff that people care about that actually make an impact. That if I was to disappear, someone would actually really notice. Obviously, the best way to do that is to really help people in some way. I was like, The next business I build, the next thing I do is going to be about helping people. That's when I started the Web agency podcast because I was like, I'm not even going to think about the money, I'm just going to think about helping people. T hat's what that was about.

Matt Newton:

Then I grew that and then started Tourism Tiger. I think a strong focus on solving real problems for people, real intrinsic problems to their business is really key. You see some successful startups, you see some less successful ones. But a lot of times when you talk to people whose business isn't really coming along that well, it's like, Well, is the problem you're solving really that worth it? And that's the thing. And that's when it comes into the financial stuff. So there was a guy here in Startup Chile who was part of the same program and he had a project, he had a premium model where it was either free or $5 a month. Obviously, you're not solving that big of a problem if all you can do is charge $5 a month for it. He would have to work like crazy to get $5. Because to get 100 sign ups to the paid one, he'd probably have to get 1,000 signups to the free one at least. Oh, my God.

Lee:

That's nuts.

Matt Newton:

The basically, does that say, you can achieve whatever you have in life if you just help enough people achieve what they want in life or whatever the quote is. I think it's a really powerful quote.

Lee:

That's so good, isn't it? It is like adding value because when you add value, when you solve people's problems, people are going to want to work with you. You're already solving problems. You're already giving epic stuff away. It's the same with your podcast. I've learned so much from you and from the guests on your podcast as well over the last, I'm going to guess it's about a year and it's such great value. It makes me want to try and give back to you in some way. I can't buy a tourism website, but hey, how else can I help you? I'll often share your podcast with other people, make them aware of it, make them aware of Tourism Tiger, etc.

Matt Newton:

I think it's a really good mentality to have. I just found the quote, it is you can't have everything in your life you want if you will just help other people get what they want. This is what I try to do. Every time I join a community, I just try to join my circle, which is an online forum, which I'm just about to mention, or Startup Chile, which I got into. I just always try to come in and add a lot of value and try to make the most amazing thing I can. I think if enough people in the world do that, we get to live in an amazing world.

Lee:

Amen, brother. Yeah. I think that deserves a clap. But they're very mistimed over there, so no worries. That's amazing, mate. Well, I've got a couple of questions here, but just off the back of it, this is pretty big stuff. We've talked about your podcast as well. I guess what would be great is if we could just go into some resources that you would recommend people go and check out. One of them obviously being the Web Agency podcast.

Matt Newton:

You're going to skip over the WordPress plugin question?

Lee:

No, I'm going to come back to that, but this is just a really good bridge.

Matt Newton:

Okay. Nice to have a nice one. Obviously, this is my Web Agency podcast. If you do run an agency, I would suspect that you would get a lot of value out of it. There are so many great guests that have come along and shared amazing things. People say that I ask unusually blunt or direct questions. I'm not aware of doing it, but apparently I do. So you get additional information out of guests that maybe they might not share elsewhere.

Lee:

I can vouch for that. It's good.

Matt Newton:

It's awesome. And then there's also a dynamite circle, which is a community for people. I think you already have an established business where you're working for yourself online travel the world, maybe, or you want to. At the very least, your location is independent and you want to level up with other people who are location independent, Dynamite Circle is an amazing place to be. I would say it's one of the top five best decisions I've ever made in my life was joining a dynamite circle.

Lee:

But like I said, it's just... Is that like a mastermind.

Matt Newton:

Of some sort? It's like 900 people. I'm part of a mastermind that was started within it. It's basically a private forum. Most free online forums are stuck because they're free. This is a private paid one. Every time I'm trying to make a decision in my business, I go searching through it because the archives are full of thousands of threads of people asking about cold email or cold calling or about Beaver Builder, for example, is a popular one. I search for Beaver Builder and I find actual people's experiences and then I go message them and get them on Skype and we have a chat. The value of it is insane. I owe pretty much everything I have to the dynamite circle. And I think it's just two things, the timing of me joining. And because of what I said before, if you go into a community looking to add a stack of value and have the most amazing time possible, rather than just sitting on the sidelines, you'll get way more value out of that community. And that's just a general rule that holds everywhere, I think.

Lee:

This is good. This is good stuff. Is that tropicalmba.com/dc?

Matt Newton:

It's the podcast. I'm not sure what the URL of it is. If you go to dono. Com, they'll probably direct you or Google it. But yeah, Tropical MBA is another podcast, which is amazing. If you wanted to do the location independent thing, it's incredible. Cool, man.

Lee:

Well, I'll make sure those go into the show notes. Sorry, I just thought it was a perfect segue into that. But yes, let's hit with the WordPress plugin. You did mention B for Builder just then, which pricked my ears up. I love that plugin. But what WordPress plugin or plugins, you're allowed as many as you want, really, would you like to throw out there that you think our wonderful people should be checking out?

Matt Newton:

So the reason I mentioned Beaver Builder is because I was just really trying to avoid the one I came onto the show to mention. And that one was Advanced Custom Fields. I'm sure if you haven't mentioned it on the podcast, I had to mention it.

Lee:

Nobody has mentioned it. You are actually the first. I know. I'm surprised. I've been tempted to.

Matt Newton:

Say it. What losers do you want to be fighting on this? Advanced Custom Fields is the legit shit. Check it out.

Lee:

There you go. And for those who don't know what it is, just quickly, it allows you to add, literally, as it says, Custom Feels. That's custom data against all sorts of stuff in WordPress. And that's not just posting pages, but also maybe against users so you could create registration forms and everything. It is just bananas. It's that good.

Matt Newton:

You can make registration forms?

Lee:

Mate, did you not know you can make registration forms?

Matt Newton:

We haven't yet tried to make a form for.

Lee:

Anything on the front end. You can do anything. So ACF form function, you can just load that into your theme. You can output the forms that you see in the back end in the front end with all of your designs.

Matt Newton:

Wow. I've been curious about this. This is something. This is another note. I'm learning from you, man.

Lee:

No worries. I think I dropped on the podcast with you as well, didn't I? The whole thing about just creating a folder and you would be able to sync using Jason, your custom fields across your entire site. We're getting geeky now, but, mate, I'm totally happy to do a call with you and just show you some of the stuff I do in ACF if you ever want to, or pass me on to your developer and we'll just have some geek time.

Matt Newton:

Yes. I'm hiring a new developer right now, so I think that may be something I'll take.

Lee:

You up. There you go. All right. And I've offered it on the podcast, so I can't let you down now, mate. I can't let you down. Cool. So ACF, was there anything else you were going to mention or shall we just stick with advanced custom fields?

Matt Newton:

Advanced custom fields works.

Lee:

It works for me as well.

Matt Newton:

I guess maybe I'll check in one more. The Sumo Me that welcomed that doubled our email subscribe rate.

Lee:

Big round of applause there. Sorry, say it again.

Matt Newton:

The Sumo Me, Welcome Mat.

Lee:

Sumo. Yeah.

Matt Newton:

Their Welcome Mat plugin thing. Doubled our email subscribe rate on the blog. It's like 8.9 % or 7 % or something insane.

Lee:

I'm going to go download that. The guys over at Sumo me are amazing. Noah is real cool. I was on one of his courses many years ago. So I'm a bit of a Noah fan boy.

Matt Newton:

Yeah, it looks like the people here, it looks like the background applause. The Flawding team are also a fan.

Lee:

Exactly. Hey, man, this has been really cool. What we'd like to do with every podcast, obviously, we love to learn about people's stories.

Matt Newton:

You also love to send them chocolate. Yes.

Lee:

It's the first time.

Matt Newton:

Yes. I tell them to really want to open this to me. I love it.

Lee:

I think they deliver. I'm pretty sure they deliver. It's Chile. I'll have to double check. You like dark chocolate, do you, or milk chocolate? Let's have a look at this.

Matt Newton:

Yeah. If it gives me diabetes, I like it. Just use that as a...

Lee:

Really rich chocolate. Okay, there you go. So what we love to do is give our guests chocolate, but we also love it when our guests share with our listeners one nugget, not a chicken nugget, but a nugget of really cool, valuable information. Just a small action, a small piece of advice that people could apply to their agency, their web development company, their media or whatever it is that you believe will make a difference.

Matt Newton:

Okay, this is going to stay way into a little bit of a self promo, but it is really key.

Lee:

I'm going to sit back. You go for it.

Matt Newton:

I'm going to say that if you have never hired an assistant online to do a process for you, you are so missing out on one of the biggest time liberators you can possibly ever enjoy. So in the last few years, I've hired over 100 people through Upwork, and it's been amazing. We have two full time project assistants that work for us, and they make a great wage for SeLoger, but not so great wage, obviously, if you're living in England. But it works really well for them. And all the repetitive stuff of building our websites, these guys just do it. So basically, we have a philosophy within the team that no one deals with anything below their pay grade, if that makes sense. So if it has to happen, that's fine. But it's repetitive enough, if it happens enough times, we systemise it to someone who does it. They're maxing out themselves, if that makes sense. So if you're a $100 hours consultant and you're logging in, you're updating plugins in WordPress or who knows? Launching people's websites, setting up analytics. All this stuff is just repeatable. Adding content into someone's website. All this stuff is super repeatable.

Matt Newton:

I would say that don't butt off the whole hog. Please stop me before I make too many more terrible metaphors. Just try it once. You notice one of those things where if you've never done it before and there's so many times in my life where I've resisted for years. And then when I finally get around to doing something, I'm like, Oh, yeah, shit. I see why people have been recommending that restaurant for so long. Or I realized why people have been recommending that TV show to me for five years and I've been ignoring it. Stuff like that. It's one of those things where I always just say, just shut your stupid part of the brain up that just has that inertia. Go just make it note. I'm just going to take one little process. I'm going to write the instruction. I'm going to get someone to do it. And what you're going to find out is that they're going to fuck up 40 % of it because you've never written instructions before. You don't know how to. But after a couple of times of doing this, oh, man. Just to give you an idea, 95 % at least % of the website build process I did not touch.

Matt Newton:

Only the most difficult stuff flows up to me and all the rest just happens. We've built entire websites where all I did was sold the person, did the onboarding call and that's the only interaction I had with the project. That's awesome. Because of systemisation, writing processes, hiring virtual assistants and that stuff. So basically, obviously the segue there is I'm watching a job board right now called JobRack.eu, specifically for hiring Eastern Europeans. Because if you do hire an online assistant, please just save yourself a lot of time and pain and money and do what all people do. You got to have years of experience in this field and just hire from Eastern Europe.

Lee:

That's JobRack.eu.

Matt Newton:

Jobrack.eu, so it's a job board for anyone who wants to hire from Eastern Europe. I've basically become really good at finding Eastern European candidates. What we're going to do is people sign up and advertise their jobs. We're just going to basically slam every possible source of Eastern Europe to get as many candidates onto this team as possible and create this amazing job board. The reason I'm doing this, even though I already have a business, is because it's super necessary. Eastern European is the best hiring zone for so much stuff. And if you haven't tried it, just try it. You'll love it.

Lee:

That's amazing. Having read the four hours work week myself, he does go on about hiring a virtual assistant or hiring people to do certain jobs. And the amount of hours I've wasted doing stuff that I'm relatively good at, but I really don't need to be doing because I could be concentrating on growing the business. So it's only really been for myself in the last six months where I've really pushed to outsource and systemize so much in my own business.

Matt Newton:

Can I give one quick suggestion here before I forget it? People make a lot of mistakes when they're hiring virtual assistants. They try to hire them to write blog posts. That's not going to happen, you need to see virtual assistants as being used for replacing them in repeatable processes. Absolutely. In terms of I want them to manage my calendar and manage my inbox. No, don't think of it like that. Think of it as even though it's something like, if you have just anything that instructions can be written and then process can be written, that they can follow that mentality. For example, instead of writing content, maybe you'll get them to research content, if that makes sense.

Matt Newton:

If you make list posts, one thing we do is we'll make the first two examples of the list post so they can see exactly how it should be, write some instructions, and then they do the rest of the rest of the research. They write the rest of the list posts and we just go through and clean it up. That's one example of how you might use a virtual assistant.

Lee:

That's really good. One example as well for myself is with the podcast is actually creating a list of WordPress influencers and other design experts, design influencers on Twitter, et cetera. So I've got people researching those, giving me lists and giving me a paragraph background on each person so I can view. Awesome. Because there's no way on earth I'm going to have the time to find everyone. And there's so many people. I'm being introduced to people through guests as well, which is awesome. But having someone else spending the time reading all the information and giving me a really good honed down list of some really valuable people that I can connect with and hopefully get on the podcast has been amazing and really liberating for myself because I'm not spending hours on the internet. I'm actually watching TV or taking my little girl out. We're going bowling tomorrow. Can't wait. It's her birthday. Yeah. exactly. Well, someone is doing that work.

Matt Newton:

Say happy birthday to her for me and she'll probably say, Wait, who is it again? You're like, It's Matt. Oh, it's that guy. The guy that whispers in your ear in the car. That really weird guy. I don't know if I like him, Daddy.

Lee:

Good job, You Lee. I am your next employee. That's amazing, mate. Hey, you've been a great laugh. I love it when people come on here and just have a laugh whilst sharing amazingness. You're amazing, Matt. Thank you so much for being on. I'm going to put Jobrack.eu, all the other stuff you put in the show notes, so people check out the show notes. It will be on W... No, it will be on leejacksondev.com forward slash...

Matt Newton:

It won't be on the dev rec. Yeah,

Matt Newton:

Exactly. It'll be leejacksondev.com/EpisodeNine. That's Episode Nine. The number nine will be the show notes, the audio, and everything. So, mate, all that's left is to say thank you so much. Have an awesome afternoon. I think it is over there.

Matt Newton:

It is 8 PM.

Lee:

Oh, yeah, there are only three hours. Have an awesome evening, mate. Thank you so much for your time. And all this left is for the people in the background to give you a massive round of applause. Cue applause. Okay, that didn't work. Damn it.

Matt Newton:

I was looking at it over them just begging them with my eyes.

Lee:

Mate, thanks so much for your time.

Matt Newton:

Thanks.

Lee:

Lee. Take care.

Matt Newton:

Bye.

Lee:

And that about wraps up the show. Thank you so much for listening. Your continued support is so valued by all of us here at leejacksondev and the WP Innovator podcast. So if you want to find out more about the podcast, head on over to WPInnovator.com. That's WPInnovator.com, and that'll take you to our most recent podcast list. You can also get in touch. I'd really love to talk to people who are listening. So many of you are contacting us, which is awesome, and we'd love to speak to more of you. If you're interested in coming on the show, do get in touch. It's leejacksondev.com/contact. We're looking to talk to people who run their own agency. We want to learn from real life experiences of agency owners just like Matt. So all that's left for me to say is adieu to you.