I can't doomscroll for 5 seconds without some "marketing guru" telling me what I should be doing to market my business. It's bloody exhausting! You might remember I burned out trying to do everything back in 2023 and I nearly closed down this very podcast as a result! Rob Cairns is a long time friend of mine, who's championed both my mental health and the work I do with the podcast. I asked him to come on to sanity check the advice we receive as small business owners, and to help us market without the burnout.

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/marketing-till-you-drop/

Posts, pages, categories, media, WordPress has you covered. But when it comes to complex builds where do you turn? Great Opomu suggests... WordPress!? Whaaat!? Well I happen to agree if I am honest, I was saying this in 2016! WordPress and the ecosystem has done a LOT of growing up since then. The code base has matured, there are epic tools out there for rapid application development and the community is huge.

Great has authored the WPforOPs Manifesto where he encourages folks to consider WordPress as a powerful business operations platform capable of doing the work of multiple SaaS tools all in one place, where you own the data and can customise till your hearts content... within reason right!?

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/more-than-just-a-wordpress/

When asked what you do, what do you say? "I build websites" or "I am a web developer". Heck even "I build websites in the XYZ industry". Sounds nice and nichey right!? Well maybe not. Alex Curtis joins us today and shares his own experience of niching down.

He shares what he does, who he does it for and the all important ingredient that defines your business, the end result.

Spoiler alert: The niche is the who you help and the result they pay for. And he points out that what you do to GET those results is not necessarily as important to clients, nor to hang your entire marketing around.

In episode 400, Adam and I talked about becoming a generalist in a changing world, and perhaps a niche is not so important. Yet in this episode, even with AI, automation, machine learning and Donald Trump, Alex shares how you can be a "generalist" within a niche.

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/what-you-do-isnt-the-niche/

I having banged on for years about niching down have to admit that today's epic guest, young Adam Lowe is right when recommends we consider becoming a little more generalist! Why? Because like it or loath it, AI, machine learning, automation and other tools are making building websites a commodity and we might wanna consider become the "glue" that holds our client, their team and systems together.

Don't drop your niche straight away tho! Listen to the show as it should inspire you to add other services or fill other gaps within the industry or industries you serve as a good starting point! There is still a LOT going for niching especially if you do have a wider skill set than making a site look pretty.

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/uno-reverso-niche-o/

"Why are most WordPress developers musicians" was a throw away comment from Zack during a random online natter. What was likely meant in jest sent my mind in circles. If it was a movie you'd see flashbacks of all the podcasts I have done in the past and behind most folks being interviewed, hanging on the wall would be a guitar, or a keyboard nearby. "YES.... WHYYYYYY".... and with that I invited the old chap onto the show for a completely random chat to see if we can make any sense of this riddle.

I actually thought this would be a laugh a minute (there are a few laughs don't get me wrong), but we went deep! And I mean REALLY deep! The sort of deep that leaves you staring blankly at the shower wall for 30 mins.

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/why-most-wordpress-devs-are-musicians/

Feeling stuck, and don't know how to get... well... unstuck!? What does stuck even look like? How do you know you're stuck? Why is this opening so confusing? What's with all the questions?

Let's face it, running a creative business is hard work. We wanna do that thing we love (be creative) but we own a business. The business has SO many demands on our time and attention that we can no longer enjoy the creative bit. If we do, we can't see the wood for the trees when it comes to developing our business.

Over time this robs us of our joy, our passion and we're soon wondering about giving it all up! Remember I was at that point with this very podcast!?

In this episode we meet Philip VanDusen, who you may recognise from waaaaay back in 2018! He helps us recognise what being stuck looks like, and how to get unstuck! Simple as! Really worth a listen because this is a ridiculously frank and practical episode.

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/how-to-get-unstuck/

Finding it a slog to market your business, plugin or theme? You might be missing the secret ingredient... Passion. In today's episode I chat with my good pal Davinder where he unpacks his experience of creating content focused on WordPress and how it naturally grew into a profitable business model that pays well, allows him to do what he loves and brings real value to the community as a result.

As you heard in episode 395, when your passion or joy is being robbed, things feel like a slog. For Davinder, it was a joy and the results are super encouraging. Have a listen, it's a cracking chat between to old (literally) mates!

Oh, and Davinder old me to use my affiliate link so here it is. Beaver builder if you wanna jump on the stability bandwagon!

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/your-passion-can-make-it-pay/

AI streamlines your processes and makes you more productive right? I learned the hard way that it can seriously affect the quality of my output, my happiness and my reach! In this episode I share how AI nearly led to me completely shutting this podcast down, and how my relationship with AI is evolving and changing for the better.

No hate toward it (AI), but this is a warning to myself and others not to over rely on automation and lose what makes you special!

Full show notes: https://trailblazer.fm/does-ai-help-or-hinder/