Intro: What happens when you're a dad of three, working a full-time job, and running not one, but two side hustles? That's the question I put to my friend Matt Medeiros, fellow podcaster, WordPress veteran, and all-around content machine. We have an honest discussion about what it takes to juggle parenting, work, and multiple projects without burning out or completely losing it.
Matt shares a lot of what's working for him and what he's still figuring out. But, I think the biggest, most important thing here is that if you're wondering how you can balance family life while chasing creative business ideas, you'll get some real strategies. I tell people that Matt's basically the New England version of me. We're both involved in a lot of different projects, running our own businesses. We both have three kids, and both of our wives are nurses. The only discernible difference is that he's a Red Sox fan and I'm a Yankee fan. So I think you're gonna get a lot of really great stuff from this episode.
And if you are wondering how you can manage your time to find the perfect balance, you should definitely take the Business Overwhelm Diagnostic. It's a simple six-question quiz that I designed that will help you reduce chaos, find more clarity, and make it so that you're not always checking your email at the playground. You can find that over at streamlined.fm/overwhelm. That's streamlined with a “d” fm/overwhelm. But for now, let's get to the intro and then the interview.
If you're overwhelmed by a chaotic business that's stealing time from your family, Streamlined Solopreneur is for you. Hey everybody, my name's Joe Casabona, and I've been there. And on this show, I will show you how to turn chaos into clarity so you can stop checking your email at the playground.
Joe Casabona: We are in very similar stations in life. Your kids are a little older than mine, and your wife is also a nurse. I feel like you've said that publicly, but sorry if I'm like doxing your wife right now.
Matt Medeiros: Correct.
Joe Casabona: We both do a lot of things, right? You have your own business, and you work for other companies. Why don't you give us a quick breakdown of like everything you do, and maybe the titles or like the amount of time you're full-time with Gravity Forms. Is that right?
Matt Medeiros: Full-time with Gravity Forms, like to say that I'm a full-time content creator across all the stuff that I do. Primarily at the day job at Gravity Forms, I'm helping them create their podcast Breakdown, which is an inside look at the Gravity Forms ecosystem and, folks who use it. Joe, you've been on anyone who's touching Gravity Forms. I'd love to hear from you. If you have a great story about Gravity Forms, I do some videos for our YouTube channel. Dustin, who's my colleague, does most of the YouTube videos. But then I'll do more long-form tutorial stuff, webinars, live streams, community things. That's what I do at Rocket Genius at Gravity Forms.
And then on the side, I do a host of things on the wpminute.com, I'm podcasting and tutorialing and writing, and publishing content for WordPress professionals. Try to make a real content business out of that game of WordPress content, which we can maybe talk about later.
And then the side, side Hustle is a newsletter called the Podcast Setup.com, where I'm supposed to be sharing a lot of podcast setups from folks like you. Joe, you also participated in that, but oftentimes I'm using it as like an outlet for critical thinking around the podcast industry. But I do need to get back into the softer side of podcasting on that newsletter and really showcasing what people are using for gear and how they put their podcast together.
Joe Casabona: Not to throw you into right here, but I did enjoy your recent piece, When Big Money Breaks Audio.
Matt Medeiros: Yes.
Joe Casabona: If the podcast setup is not the outlet for that, I do appreciate the writing that you've done for this because I think it's really good and important to hear. The podcast industry is changing so much. You know, again, back when we wrote our book, it was like, if you had decent audio and half a plan, like, you could probably succeed in your podcast.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: And now people are like, wondry couldn't even make it. What's happening? And it's like, there's a middle ground there. It doesn't have to be a massive audio drama, but it still has to be good, listenable content.
Matt Medeiros: Every year, I'm sure you see this too. Like, every year you hear podcasting is dying, and then at the start of the year, you start to hear that podcasting is making its way back again. And that's been like that for like 15 years. It's always like, nobody does podcasts, and then at the start of the year, everybody does podcasts, and then dips down again at the end of the year. It's this crazy trend. And I would say that the word podcasting or have a podcast do a podcast has never been more valuable than right now. The biggest thing i,s like, what is a podcast? I don't want to, like, have to get into that right now, but podcasting is super valuable.
Joe Casabona: That's for a different day.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah, yeah. But I think where we're going with possibly, like, today's conversation is like, how the heck do you keep all of this going? Like, how do you do this? And for me, anyway, it's like, I have this love for WordPress because it's open publishing, the freedom of publishing, et cetera. And podcasting is exactly that, except audio and video. The core of it is open source with, like, RSS and all these other technologies.
So, it's very easy for me to, like, I say easy, but it's easier for me to balance these two thought processes or outlets that I jump to. Because if I'm blogging about WordPress and then I go and I blog about podcasts, to me, it's like the same thing. It's just a different tool. Right? Like open publishing, I can talk about WordPress, open publishing, I can talk about podcasting.
And then my day job is all about WordPress as well. So it's an easier balance. It's not like I'm going from my day job being at Gravity Forms to, like, my side hustle talking about the Red Sox, and then my side side hustle talking about, like, drones, and I'm like, three different. Like, how do you even stitch all this stuff together and keep yourself sane? For me, it's all about open publishing, and it's easy for me to, like, I'll talk a little bit about WordPress over here, talk a little bit about podcasting over there, AI stuff, et cetera. So that same thread helps me stay, hopefully, a little bit more sane throughout this process.
Joe Casabona: I think this is a really good thing. Guys like you and me, we've started multiple businesses and side hustles, and I would never call myself a serial entrepreneur, because that's one of my trigger words. But I think we probably more than most people, look at what we do and think, could this be a business? Right?
And so, like, something I've always risked was turning my hobbies into jobbies, which is the first time I heard that, I think it was Mike Curley on the Relay Network. And I was approached last year after the podcast movement to start a Yankees daily podcast. By the way, those who don't know, like, Matt's a Red Sox fan and I'm a Yankees fan, but we make it work.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: And I'm really glad I didn't do it. I couldn't fathom turning one of my favorite hobbies, like, I'd have to, like, watch the game and take notes.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Hats off to anybody who have the managerial numbers-driven. I just want to run this business as a business. If you can do that, that's great. That means that I salute you and I say, hey, you're more of a business person than I am for being able to do that. Because you can detach yourself emotionally during business decisions, and probably more than likely, you can detach yourself at the end of the day for specifically, like, at the WordPress level. For me, it's like, no, I love WordPress, which means that I'm constantly on, like, thinking about this stuff and podcasting too, right? So, like, these things, like, I'm constantly on thinking about this stuff.
It's also, like, what I enjoy. It's easy for me to be like, lunatic is the first word that came to my head. It's easy to be like a lunatic about this stuff, but it's because I also enjoy it. So, I'm okay because it's always leading me to, like, learn new things, whatever, new technologies, new marketing things with podcasts, running businesses, and entrepreneurial things. It's like, it's a good middle ground for, like, all of these things that I kind of like. And it means that I also like for the WordPress stuff. I've been podcasting about WordPress now for, I want to say, 15 years, but now it's probably 17 years because it's 2005. So it's probably like 17 years. I've been talking about WordPress. And yeah, it hasn't been like this home run, but it's also something that has made nice side hustle income for me, landed me multiple jobs, and gives me that resume builder.
And we've talked about this before. I think, like, even in podcasting like, keeping these things close to me is also a resume builder, where I feel less worried is also not a good phrase. But I feel less worried that if I ever needed to jump jobs, not that I'm looking for it, it's a little bit better for me that flexibility, because I'm not just jumping to, like, mortgages. Like, now I'm gonna sell mortgages, you know, and I don't know anything about it, but this puts me in a nice place where if something happens and I do need to pivot, I have that flexibility to a degree. So what I'm getting at here is it's work, it's enjoyment, but it's also an investment in myself to have that flexibility.
Joe Casabona: I think this is a really good thing to touch on, too. Cause, like, a lot of solopreneurs I'm thinking about, I'm repositioning myself. I did an interview with Charlotte Crowther, who does, like, signature frameworks, and I've hired her, and she asked me a question in our kickoff call that basically, like, sent me into a shame spiral that's like, what do I do? Like, how do I help people?
One of the things I was looking up was what are solopreneurs' biggest pain points are. Right. And like, too many hats is number one. Stress about generating a consistent income is another. And I think, like, putting all of your eggs in one basket is not good. We've talked about this in the freelance world, where it's like, if 60% of your revenue comes from one client, you're in a bad spot. And I think that creating content the way we do with the podcast, with our YouTube channel, with our newsletters. Yeah. It helps us think through problems, and it also builds a resume because we're showing, we're not telling. And we are letting people know, like, hey, when we do something, we care about it, we think about it, and then we, like, generously show up. Seth Godin said Podcasting is the generous art of showing up.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I hope that the person listening to this who might also be a content creator for me. Anyway, I was telling a friend of mine, I've told him this repeatedly, because I just want it to sink in with him.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Matt Medeiros: But he's starting his content-creating career, and he's doing whatever. He's doing fine with it. He's looking for, like, everyone else, more revenue, more customers to make content for all this stuff. And I told him, like, every company needs a content creator right now. Like, they need a human in your ears, on your screen, writing to you. Like, there are tons of companies right now that need somebody to represent their brand, which is largely what I have done for my last three careers. I mean, Pagely, I was an Account Executive, but I was also one of the more sane faces you would interact with at Pagely. And people in the community respected me and liked me or whatever.
And then Castos, and now, of course, Gravity Forms. But I think content creators, specifically, the ones that, like, kind of get the business side of it, especially if you're trying to run it yourself. Like, if you can represent a brand right now, that's actually, in my opinion, that's your best return is getting a job where somebody pays you a nice salary to do the thing that they need. They need a human in place cause we got all this AI stuff, people aren't going to care about you unless they can connect with you.
And I think anyone sitting here is going, this content game is pretty tough on my own. I think there's a way to get a job, represent a brand or company, and maybe they let you do what I get to do is I still get to create WordPress content because it actually is an advantage to Gravity Forms. It's an advantage to Gravity Forms that I continue to do my stuff because it keeps me in the mix of the community. And I think there are other places that could make that happen for anyone listening to this.
But in the beginning, I was like, oh, man, this is easy. Like, I can easily get sponsors, and this is a nice side hustle. And what I looked at from a business perspective was I'm taking 100% of this revenue coming in, and I'm buying diapers, I'm paying for vacations, I'm paying off my car. Like, as a parent, I'm like, this is great. And then what I started to realize is as I got busier and busier at the day job and in life in general with the kids and the family, I started to realize I can't just keep taking this revenue out of the business and having it as a nice luxury income. I need to reinvest this back, which is what I did when I ran an agency for a decade. I started hiring people, and I started paying for advertising. And then you get your pipeline of a hundred percent of revenue, and then your margins become like 20%. We can get deeper into this. And I'll just wrap it by saying, is, like, right now, what I've been working on through 2025 is I need to get my margins down. This is just me painting the picture. I'm trying to get my margins down to 20% so that I'm taking the rest of that 80% of revenue and throwing it back into the WP minute so that it runs itself, and I'm less involved,d and I just operate on that business. You know, the famous cliche is like working on the business instead of in the business, because now it's just gotten to a point where kids are getting older, activities, day job. I'm like, nah, great, I could take this money in, but I'm driving myself nuts trying to do all the work, where now it's just like, reinvest it, give it back to the team, let them do the content, and I'll just focus on the business ops side of things. So there's a long way of getting to that balancing all of this stuff.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And I think we covered a lot of ground. First of all, if you're playing the Streamlined Solopreneur drinking game, make sure to take a drink for AI and work on the business, not in the business.
Matt Medeiros: Is that a thing you say a lot, too?
Joe Casabona: I mean, like, I don't know how often I explicitly say it, but it's always, like, there in the back of my mind, there's a part of me that's like, this is what you say. And then the other part of me is like, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah, yeah.
Joe Casabona: At this point, it's the best way to communicate that idea. And I think, like, as I want to remain a solopreneur, I don't want to have, like, employees who rely on me. You know, I barely want to rely on me. Or I guess to put it a different way, before I have other people rely on me. I'd want to make it so that if my wife wanted to quit her job tomorrow, we wouldn't need to make any changes in my business. I want to support my family, even if we drop down to a single income and pay for insurance and stuff like that. And so I wouldn't want to bring on any employees anyway.
But what you said is still true of any business, right? Especially if you are doing multiple things. You said you want to get your margins down to 20%. I think that's really admirable because I think I've heard advice that's like, oh, yeah, when I want to buy something, I just find a client project that costs that much and I charge for it. I'm like, that's insane. What about taxes?
Matt Medeiros: I mean, content and media shouldn't be operating in the ridiculous market. Like, just taking all that money and just claiming it as profit for taxes. Again, as a solopreneur, like I did it, I have done it, and it's just like a massive tax payment at the end, and whatever. Like, it's fine. It depends on, like, everybody's lifestyle and how much they're making and what they're doing. But luckily, I have a few people who are just contractors that work for me, but they are now, throughout the year, have been the biggest expense. But the difference is, like, for the last, I don't know, two or three months, I haven't been hosting the podcast myself. I had these other two guys, Kurt Von Ahnen and Toby Cryns, hosting the WP Minute plus, like, talking about agency stuff.
And I've just been dialed in on where the next sponsor comes from? How do I create value for sponsors? And this team over here is creating content for me, and it's felt good. It's a new kind of stress for sure. But I don't feel that week-to-week stress or almost day-to-day stress that I had when I was freaking doing everything, which was the newsletter, the blog post, the audio editing, uploading all the stuff, creating the thumbnails. Doing all that yourself, it quickly becomes burdensome, and you just burn out, which is the scariest thing.
Joe Casabona: And then to turn it towards parenting a little bit, we'll get back to the business. But I think this is a good point to bring up. Now you have three kids. Did you do summer camp at all? We're recording this towards the end of summer.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah, I mean, it's been tough. Like, my mom will come babysit every once in a while. My wife works two 12-hour shifts, so it's not like she's working every day, which is good. But still, like if she works twice a week, that's two full days that I really don't have any coverage. Like, I'm not trying to have my mom come over every time.
Joe Casabona: Full days, Full days, right? It's a 7A, 7P. That's what my wife does. So like you're also on the hook for bedtime?
Matt Medeiros: Yeah, from morning to bedtime, which you know, any parent knows, the morning and the end are like the most amount of chaos, and then somewhere in the middle you're trying to entertain them. But we're coming down to the end, and they did some summer camps, but not like, I know some people like send their kids away to camp. It was nothing like that. It was like 9 to 12, and then I had to go pick them up, which was tough.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, it is. My father-in-law is young for a grandparent, but he's like in his 50s and like he would take the kids once or twice a week. But we kind of noticed this summer, like that he was doing it for our benefit, I think at the expense of himself, because he still works. He's a contractor. He works with this organization called Sail Beyond Cancer, where they do sales with people going through chemotherapy and memorial sales. And so like, I'm confident he doesn't listen to this podcast. But like we kind of said, like, you know, let's lower Pop Pop Spurden a little bit and like have him do once a week. Right?
Matt Medeiros: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: And then even as we're going into the school year, right, my youngest is going to be half-day pre-K, which half-day is 8:30 to 11. I don't know in what universe that's a half day. It's like two and a half hours. And so like this will kind of continue into the school year. I think he'll take the kids one day a week. But, balancing the work side hustle and the side hustle and kids, if you're not managing your time right, is just a recipe for disaster.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Totally honest. Like it's not easy. There's no secret magic bullet for any of this stuff. You know, I'm talking to the wrong guy because you're a guy who puts a lot of systems and processes in place, and I don't. At least not from like the balance of, I know you're really good with like time blocking and doing all the other stuff. Like, I know when I text you and I see the moon icon come like that, Joe knows to like block this time off, and I'm not going to get a response.
Joe Casabona: Thanks to my front camera for that because it notifies me anytime. I'm like, I don't need to know when someone's walking their dog.
Matt Medeiros: But yeah, man, it's just not easy. And it's just like you try to get around it. I remember when my youngest was just doing the pre-K like that, and that was the same time as half day was 8:30 to 11:30 or something like that, whatever it was. And it's like by the time you get home you can get like one or two critical things in and then you just have to leave to go pick up the kid and then when he's home it's like all bets are off if you don't have somebody coming over. And the alternative is this is like what, sit him in front of a tv and yeah, guess what, I had to do that a few times, you know, and that's just what it is. Like I have to get work done, and it's not easy.
But now like all our three kids are full-time in school. Last year was the first year of that. So, I have nine, seven, and six. He actually turned six in two days. That was huge when all three of them were in school because now it's like, oh my God, I just got a whole day back. Which is tremendous for the schedule and for the productivity.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, you know what I'm thinking about for this coming year, right is I just might have the expectation that if my father-in-law is not watching the kids that day, I don't think I'm gonna get anything done in the morning. So, like, I think I'm gonna go straight from drop off to the gym because I'm trying to do that again, and maybe have a meeting and then pray that my youngest still takes naps when the school year starts. You can't count on that.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah, Life would be very different. Like, I'm very fortunate to have the job at Gravity Forms. That means, like, if I had to operate WP Minute as my only source of income, that would be tremendously more stressful. Things would be largely different there. I mean, the business would probably be a bigger business because I'd have all that time to, like, focus on it, of course, but just as like a strategy for anybody who is a content creator out there. Like, I think right now we are at our prime value. Anyone who can create content for a business, I think you have the advantage right now. You go into a company that can't produce content well or doesn't have, like, the knack for speaking to their customers in a nice, like, technical way, where it's like, I can help you understand our product and software, and I can be a really good community person for you. Like, I think we have that advantage. So anyway, the point is, is, like, really lucky that I have that job to help balance all of this stuff.
Joe Casabona: I'll just tap in here. I'm an evangelist for RSS.com, which. Matt, thank you for that connection. I have you to thank. I got lucky that you got a job at Gravity Forms when you did because RSS.com needed a content creator. It was my worst year in business, I think, in real years of business. Right. Like, yeah, my senior year of high school doesn't count as a real year of business because I just had fun.
It's the same thing. Right? Like, I trust that they really like the videos that I've been producing for them. And it is a way for me to, a I start to talk more about systems and automations and less about podcasting as my prime subject matter, I now have an outlet for that with RSS.com, right? Because, like, we want to help podcasters, and I'm not full-time with them, I'm a contractor with them. And it's really rewarding. Like, it's really nice working on a team and creating content in such a way that I am. And so I just want to, I was going to say double-click. I don't like.
Matt Medeiros: That's another one. Somebody's barely double-clicked into that.
Joe Casabona: Cosign. Right. I want to agree wholeheartedly with what you've said here, because Nathan Barry said recently on LinkedIn, like, every business is a content creation business now. Or he's predicting that. Right. It's just they're going to look very similar, and if you do have that skill, it's going to be in high demand.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: I want to turn the conversation now towards how you work. What tools are you using? How are you managing your time? What do your hours at Gravity Forms look like versus what you're doing for the WP minute, versus what you're doing for the podcast setup, versus being a present father? Right. Because you're a pretty present dad too.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I mean, the tooling has actually shifted in the last few months. If we're just talking, like, tooling and getting the job done. For the last few years, like, the podcasts and videos and such were all done through Descript. They own SquadCast, and I was using that to record. And I think the point of this story is I've seen Descript change a lot more to video, and they're doing a lot with AI stuff.
But they did introduce one major feature, which was for screen recordings. Because I used to use Screen Flow to do all of my tutorials, and I never used Descript because they always had it, it was like a flat file. Meaning, like, when I recorded my face, it was also part of the screen. And anybody who's done screen recording before knows now you won't be able to move your face in the edit. So if I needed to, like, move my face or zoom in, it was just a flat file. So you would just see that all happen. They shifted that to adding that as another layer. So now it is my go-to for screen recording.
But when I started to expand, so Eric Karkovack, who's been working with me at the WP Minute forever, I was like, hey, man, like, I need to offload a lot of, like, this editing and post production stuff and setting it up to convertkit or Kit. Can you do all this for me? Otherwise, I'm just gonna go. I think I even talked to you about it, Joe. Like, otherwise I'm just gonna go find somebody to do it. And he's like, yeah, I can handle all this stuff. Plus, I want to learn.
I started using Riverside to record podcasts because I was just having a hell of a time with Squadcast. It was just constantly failing, constantly terrible recording quality. So I switched to Riverside, and then what I realized there was Riverside is actually making a lot of great podcast editing features inside of Riverside.
So then Eric and I were chatting one day, and like downloading from Riverside, sending it to Description, but like Descript was, you know, there's a lot of like complications, a lot of technical stuff there. And I was like, well, we could have just done it like in three clicks right here in Riverside, where you and I are recording right now. And it's so much easier.
So now I use Riverside as the place to record all of the podcast stuff. And then Descript has now become my go-to for screencasts and maybe like other like static videos where I need to do like a bunch of editing. And it's funny to say that because I always, like for the last few years, especially on the podcast setup, like talking about how much I love Descript as the podcasting tool of choice, and like, couldn't live without,t has like kind of been replaced with Riverside. And Descript sort of scooped up all the other stuff that I used to do, which was, you know, whatever. Sometimes DaVinci resolve for a video, sometimes ScreenFlow for a screen tutorial.
There's another one that I was using too, that was just like for short-form videos. Cause he used to do vertical things. I was like, now Descript does it all for me, but it's actually becoming less important to me as a podcaster, if that makes sense.
Those two tools are what save me a bunch of time now in the whole like content production thing. Now I've got Riverside. We can just edit right there. I don't need to share all this other stuff. But then, you know, the typical publishing stack for me, the WP minute, WordPress obviously hosting on Transistor, and then Descript for Screencast, Riverside for the podcast recording, and then Kit for the newsletters.
And the only other piece of software that I recently brought in, which I really hated at first, but it's getting a little bit better, is Opus Clips for sharing and creating shorts. Anybody who's followed me for a while, I've always hated it. I've hated shorts; I hate the idea of it, I hate stuff that disappears. I hate short-form stuff. But I was like, I gotta do it because I know that there is traffic there and there are eyeballs there.
Once I had Kurt and Toby, and Eric hosting the podcast, that allowed me to like free up the time, explore these tools, and now bring in Opus to create the short-form shorts out of all of their content. And now I've just become like, that's what my job is now, is like find the great clips and share those out.
And yeah, the Traffic is like crazy for shorts. But I also look at it as artificial because I'm just like, this is just YouTube wanting people to do shorts. And it gets like 10 times the traffic that the long-form podcast does. But I'm just like, okay, I'll do it. Because, you know, somewhere someone is seeing it and it's working. But Opus has been a tool for that. The reason why I said I hated it at first is because the UI definitely needs help. You definitely have to be like a 13-year-old TikToker to like understand it. Once you get it, it's powerful.
Joe Casabona: That's good to know. I've like abandoned my social media strategy. I post on LinkedIn. That's it. I know we're coming up on time here, and I want to cover two more things. Right. I think one is the WP business model. I know we didn't talk about this ahead of time, but we were really focused on tools. But I think that this is a really good thing to cover because I'd love to know, like, if you're open to it, how you're funding the WP Minute, and then mostly like how it makes money and how it's like a part of your creator business that helps you do other things.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So largely it's about sponsorship dollars for me, and that's having been in the space for, again, 17, 15, 17 plus years. Right, making content, people trusting me, people knowing who I am, and then knocking on somebody's door and saying, Please sponsor us. We really have two plans. It's $12,000 for the year. That's the higher-end one. So a thousand bucks a month.
And that is largely geared towards web hosting companies because they're the ones that largely have the money. Unless you're Elementor, who also became a pillar sponsor last month. They're also pretty sizable.
When I go into a sponsorship sales call, it's largely about letting them know when you sponsor us, it's because you want us to continue doing this work. Like, you look at what we do at the WP minute, you understand, like my stance on WordPress and the community and how this stuff all comes together. I'm a critic of WordPress. Doesn't mean I'm a critic or a hole about WordPress. I'm just a critic, and I try to look at it from what I call the blue-collar digital worker. Like you're somebody who's got a small agency. You just want to get the job done, you want to do it right, you want to charge a fair price. You're not trying to grow this mega agency, and you're not trying to rip people off. Just want to do good work. That's the person that's always in my mind when I'm creating content. So as long as the brand understands half of this reaso,n here is to keep us doing this work, then we're good.
And then we'll talk about sponsorship. I hate to use the word deliverables because I don't use the deliverables during a sales call. But, like, what are you going to get when you sponsor us? Like, here's where you'll be placed. Here's where you'll be read in credits.
Joe Casabona: What are the benefits? Right.
Matt Medeiros: What are the benefits? What are the benefits of the sponsorship? And we do some unique content. Like, we'll do podcast episodes, and it's for an entire year. So I try to tell them, you have a whole year, so use it wisely. But let's use it. So if you're a big web hosting company, in a couple of months, let's plan a podcast with your CEO. And then after that, like, you want to do a live stream about your product, let's do it. I'm trying to do it in a trustworthy way where the audience doesn't get mad. And I'm not just selling for you. Like, I'm not just pitching stuff for you, trying to be as even as possible.
Those are the two biggest revenue generators for the business. There's a membership component, too, where you can kind of pay whatever you feel like we're worth, and you can join a Slack group and all this other stuff, but that's a smaller annual portion of revenue. But largely driven by sponsor dollars. For me, anyway.
Joe Casabona: Do you have plans to try to grow the membership? Like, are you worried that sponsorship dollars could dry up?
Matt Medeiros: There's only a handful of people, I think, that make unique content that looks to support the WordPress professional. I won't name names of others, but there are definitely others who are just like, here's the top 10 plugins for XYZ. Click this, and you get an affiliate link.
Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah. Here's the top 10 affiliate payouts.
Matt Medeiros: Yeah. And then some people try to do, like, this mix of, here's a bunch of links. Here's all, like, the hot stuff that's happening and seeded in here is going to be affiliate links and whatever. That works for you. That works for you. I cannot detach myself from commentating on WordPress and, like, thinking about how things in the space affect the freelancers. That's just the type of content that I'm always going to create. And that's a blessing and a curse to a degree. But that's how that business operates.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And I think that's really important. I think one of the reasons I left the WordPress space is because I think it has too many yes men. And I guess I kind of gave up the fight that you've continued. So thanks for that. I think that's really good. We've been talking for a long time. I think this is going to be show notes, Rich, because I'm going to include the stuff I did for your platforms and a bunch of other stuff.
But if people want to learn more about you and see what you're doing, where can they find you?
Matt Medeiros: Day job at gravityforms.com. If you're looking for WordPress stuff, thewpminute.com.
Joe Casabona: Love it. Matt Medeiros, thanks so much for joining me. Always a pleasure to talk to you.
Matt Medeiros: Joe Casabona, it's always a fantastic time.
Joe Casabona: Thank you. And thank you for listening. And until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.