WP in One Month

  • June 19, 2018

    Self Employment: Year One Recap

    I started my first business in high school, making websites for anyone who’d give me a shot. It was a great way to make money that I carried through college, grad school, and my adult life. I even did it full time a little after college, but lack of benefits and the need to learn more forced me to find a full time job. For pretty much that entire time, the stakes were different – and not very high. I didn’t have anyone except myself to support and I didn’t require too much.

    That changed when I got married and had a daughter. I thought my chances at full time self-employment were dramatically lower as a result. However, today marks the anniversary of me leaving my full time job to pursue my side business full-time. I’d like to reflect on the first year.

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  • January 18, 2018

    How I Launched Creator Courses in One Week

    7 months ago I took my business full-time. Being a freelancer for most of my life, and even doing it full-time for a while after college, I thought I had a pretty good handle on how things would work. But as it turns out, the product space is a lot harder to work in than the services space (for me). I’ve lamented over the last few months that it’s easier for me to sell one person on a $5,000 project, than 100 people on a $50 course. But after attending CaboPress and participating in an amazing Master Mind group, I was able to get some perspective and readjust. The Autumn and Winter have been much better than the Summer.

    But what does that have to do with a new site I launched called Creator Courses? Everything! I decided that as well as do an intro course on Gutenberg, I would launch a new brand. Here’s how I did it, and why.

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  • April 7, 2016

    Pivoting WP in One Month

    Do you know the story of Pixar? It’s a really interesting one that I strongly recommend you read all about in Creativity Inc. Here’s the gist: Pixar started off as a piece of hardware inside LucasFilms, and the team was tasked with pushing the technological envelope for live-action movies. When Lucas had to sell off that division, it was purchased by Steve Jobs and they tried for a number of years to sell hardware before pivoting and making their first featured length animated movie, Toy Story. It took about 20 years, but Pixar found its true calling. While I am not at all comparing myself to Pixar, I am taking an important less from them: you may not find success in your first iteration.

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  • April 4, 2016

    How to Build Better Web Pages in WordPress

    When I was creating the website for my new project WP in One Month, I wanted to make sure the home page was diverse with content, different sections, and a lot of information. As a WordPress developer, I could have built a completely custom page template with custom fields for each section, and I could have made use of one of the many plugins to do that. However, I also wanted to get the site up and running quickly. I was pivoting the business and wanted to focus more on executing ideas than on developing the website (I know many developers can relate to me here). I opted instead to build a simple child theme from the theme Ward and use a page building plugin called Beaver Builder. It saved me literally hours of development and gives me lots of flexibility.

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