“So if all you have is a Facebook page, and this happened back in like, probably 2021, of my non-profits, we did social media management at the time. They all had incredible engagement on their Facebook pages. People, everything got seen, and liked and, you know, commented on. And then Facebook switched their algorithm. And suddenly none of that stuff showed up for those people anymore. At that point, you had to rely on another asset to be able to promote your company. You can't control the way that those businesses decide to unfold their next move. And you also can't control the way that they display your content.” - Monica Pitts
Joe Casabona: Context is everything. It's easy to think that if you have a salesperson and that salesperson is actively frustrating potential clients to the point where they never consider hiring you, that you'd fire that salesperson. But what if your website is doing it? Would you fire your website? You should. That's why I'm so excited about this interview with Monica Pitts that I did. She's going to tell you how you can save hours per month by making your website a member of your team. Now that saving hours per month sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? We spoke for over 2 hours, and you are getting the best parts of that conversation. We cover everything from mindset to automation, and of course, we cover tools.
I want you to look for a few top takeaways from the interview.
- Your website doesn't need to just be a brochure site. It can actually take work off of your plate. This is why you need to treat it like an employee and not just a static asset.
- But you should be cautious about relying too heavily on third-party automation tools like Zapier. While I love Zapier, you should consider native integrations first for faster processing and a better user experience. Not to mention, fewer links in the chain are less likely to break.
- A website is crucial for your business. If you offer a reliable source of information compared to social media platforms, then your website can serve as a long lasting marketing approach versus social media which is more ephemeral.
Social media is great to show people you're alive, but you really need a website to attract customers. I think that this was such a great conversation. I know you're going to love it too. You can find it in all of the show notes over at [streamlined.fm/418]. And if you want to hear Monica and I talk even more about automation as well as various website-building platforms, you can become a member. Again, that's all going to be at [streamlined.fm/418].
Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur. A show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.
Joe Casabona: All right. I'm here with Monica Pitts, the founder of MayeCreate Design, and I'm so excited because while we did recently rebrand the name, we will be talking about web stuff today. Monica, how are you?
Monica Pitts: I'm very excited to talk about web stuff today. It is my favorite geeky topic of all time.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Likewise. For long-time listeners, they know that I was a Web Developer for 20 years. But since moving into the podcast coaching space, I try not to write my own code. I want to offer solutions for my audience that don't require knowing how to program. And so, I'm really excited to talk to you about, talk about this to you today because I've talked about websites a lot in the past iteration of this show, but through a very different lens. So let's start here. What is a website in 2024?
Monica Pitts: I feel like a website in 2024 should not be a pain in your butt, and it should be a working member of your team. If it's just a brochure that hangs out 24/7, then I mean, that's not terrible if that's all you need as a member of your team. But, I like to build websites that actually solve problems for people and create time for them in their day. So that way, they can focus on other things that maybe, can't be solved as easily by something like a website.
Joe Casabona: Gotcha. So, for those who don't know, a brochure site is basically just like 5 static pages. Right? It's like home about contact, services, whatever. Right? Like the basics. Right? If it's a restaurant, it's like a menu, but then, like the menu is a PDF you have to download anyway. So, when you say like working member of your team, do you mean like, it should do stuff? Is this like LMS, an e-commerce site? Are you thinking more than that?
Monica Pitts: Well, not every single business needs to teach or sell something online. So, I like to think about it like, what are the processes that you do over and over again in your business, and how can you leverage your website to streamline those processes for you?
So, for example, we have a client that is a nursing staffing company, and they have to get lots and lots of paperwork from their staff members. And so one day, I was like, why are you collecting it all as papers and then scanning it in and then submitting it when instead, you could have them fill out a form and have it automatically either turn it into a PDF for you, if that's the format it needs to be in, or just have it save it someplace where you can find it later or just put all the information into your system. Right? So, like, it saved them easily 40 hours a month, which is awesome. Right? Just because they weren't printing, scanning, blah blah blah. It's just a mess. Right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Love that framing. Right? Because, again, like, you're in the web space. I was in the web space for a long time. It's, I think it's easy for us and people like us, maybe some of the listeners to think like, well, of course, you would use a web form. Right? But, like, there are businesses who, like, they've always done it a certain way, and they continue to do it that way. And the website can be a huge asset to, like you said, save 40 hours a month. That's huge. That's like a, that's a work week a month.
Monica Pitts: And it can do really simple things, like you can have it set an appointment for you. You can have it, what's in it, frequently asked questions. I know. It seems so simple, but if people keep calling in over and over again with the exact same questions and you're making them sit on hold to get them answered, you can put in your hold message answers to commonly asked questions like a, b, and c are available on our website at blahdiblah.com, and just send them over there. Right? It's not hard, and that saves you time. And it makes your staff members happy because they don't have to answer all those stupid questions on the phone. They're not stupid. Okay? They just feel frustrated when it's the 17th time that you've answered them that day.
Joe Casabona: Right. Right. You and I are both parents. Right? I, and I have small kids. You have had small kids. We know how frustrating it can be to get the same question over and over and over again even though you just answered it. Right?
Monica Pitts: Yes.
Joe Casabona: And so sadly, there's not an FAQs for children. Anybody who can invent that will be a millionaire, or billionaire. But, yeah, it's really great to have a resource. I actually encountered, like a useful chatbot recently because, like, I was, you know, I just try to say, like, the stuff to get me to an actual person, but the chatbot definitely answered the question I was have. I was really impressed, and I'm like, oh, this is great. I don't have to explain my problem to a person and then be like, no. Can you just escalate me to the person who can actually answer my question? It was just, it was delightful. I was surprised and delighted.
Monica Pitts: I had an experience like that with my utilities company recently, and they had actually an intelligent chatbot that searched the information inside the site better than a search feature would have done it and then rephrased it and spit it back out to me. And I was like, hey, this is good. It, like, said, hey, I don't find this referenced anywhere on the site. So at this point, I would say that you don't have to worry about it, but you can contact these people if you wanna talk to them now. And I'm like, hey. I guess I'll just see if they're gonna charge me for using my credit card to pay for my utilities on the first bill and then move on. But I thought it was really nice because it was an intelligent chatbot. Now, the ones that are just completely stupid, I'm like, I wish that you would just not. Like, sometimes I really do wanna talk to a real person, and I get the chatbot, and they just keep sending me back to the exact same resource that I've already found myself and run entirely, and it's missing steps like 7 and 8.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Yep.
Monica Pitts: And I'm trying to get through step 10. It's like, please don't send me back there. So, I think that there's all kinds of other ways that you can really simply like, the way I, what I tell people to do is when you're wondering what can I solve through my website, I tell you just keep a log. What are you doing during the day that feels repetitious that makes you bored that is very detail-oriented? Like, it has to be done just this exact way. And if it's those things, it could potentially be started through your website and then automated using other systems or even pushed into a system that you have. So it could be as simple as someone fills out a form and then you have to resubmit that information into another system. What? Or, like, people are trying to sign up for your email list? Yeah. They should go in.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: Or you're like, oh, well, now I have to segment the people in my email list. No. Segment them from the website. So, just think about the things that you're doing that are like, ugh, this is demotivating to me. And then ask yourself, is there a way that I could solve this problem on intake by adding a feature to my website and make the website actually do a job instead of just show up for work dressed nice. You know?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I love that. I'm gonna share, I think, what is a really good example of what you're talking about. Because I think sometimes I'm like, am I being extra by doing this? And, like, maybe a little, but also it's really improved my process, and you went through it. Right? When you filled out the form, to book a time, right, you didn't just go straight to Calendly. You went through, a Gravity Form.
Monica Pitts: Mhmm.
Joe Casabona: But then all of the information you filled out on that form was passed to Calendly. Right? So I didn't make you fill out 2 forms, and I captured your information in my system, including a headshot because that's always…
Monica Pitts: You can't do that in Calendly.
Joe Casabona: You can't do that in Calendly. Right? And it's like, really, you know, you're gonna get an email after this interview saying like, hey. Thanks for being on the show. Upload your headshot to this Dropbox. But, like, maybe 20% of people do that versus like, 80% who do it on the front end when they're filling out the form. Right?
And so, yeah, that's like, my website. It's a Gravity Form. And if you get one link, it'll show you like, if you've been invited versus if you're just applying, you'll get like a different set of questions. And like, that again, that feels extra, but like, it's a really nice touch when I send somebody who I'm personally reaching out to and inviting and saying, like, hey. Will you come to my podcast? There are a lot of questions on this form. Most of them are already filled out, and you just need to check the information and pick a time. Right? Versus, like, here's a wall of questions that's gonna take you 10 minutes to come on my show. Do this to do me a favor. Right? Like…
Monica Pitts: And then I ask if they're even gonna read them. Like, man…
Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah
Monica Pitts: Have you read this?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. So it's like, also, I'm just gonna say here, I never ask people, like, what I should ask you. That's like, that's my job to figure out. I just draw a line in the sand there. So, I really like what you're saying here. Right? Because I think people will hear, well, like, you need to make your website do jobs for you or, like, you need to automate stuff, and they immediately think, well, I'm just gonna have to use Zapier, right, when your website can offer a bunch of different options for you first.
Monica Pitts: Mhmm. Yeah. There's a lot of ways, and this is, I always look for a way that doesn't include Zapier first.
Joe Casabona: Mhmm. Yeah.
Monica Pitts: And I'm not saying that I don't have a gazillion Zaps set up to help me run through parts of my business, because Zapier is a really awesome tool, but Zapier also will error, and then you won't figure out that it errored until later, and that stinks. And so I always look for, can I solve this problem in a way that 2 systems can natively talk to one another? Because if I can get them to natively talk to one another instead of putting a 3rd party processor in the middle of it, my life is just so much easier. You always and especially as somebody who would, like, advise people or set it up for them, I always think, oh, yeah. That can happen. But it's like, no. Actually, it can't. Like, I know that sounds strange, but, like, in Zapier, you can't look up a folder by the folder ID number. I just found that out on Friday. Do you know how frustrated I was? All the client folders are made through automation, and now I can't look them up unless they're in that exact same automation because I can only look them up by name and the way that we use them. Okay. So I'm going all anyway, it's like you just didn't know. You thought it would work and it really doesn't, but when 2 things, like, natively, like, combine using an API, it is usually so much better and less painful. You're still gonna have to figure out that learning curve, but it's also easier for someone who's not a programmer to do it, quite frankly.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely. If you wanna hear I'm gonna, Monica, I'm gonna ask you about this in the Accelerated, the Pro Show. So if you wanna hear the rest of that, like, techie automation thing, you can sign up over at streamline.fm/join, become a member. You'll get this and every episode ad-free and extended. So be on the lookout for that. I made a note, so I'm definitely gonna remember. But you're right. Right? It kinda reminds me of my favorite show growing up was FRIENDS, and there was an episode where, it was Monica and Ross were like throwing a ball, and Chandler wanted to join. They're like, no. Chandler's the dropper. Is someone listening if I'm getting the wrong people? It's unlikely, but if I am, let me know. They're like, Chandler's drop things. Right? That's almost how I feel about introducing a third-party tool like Zapier. Right? It's like we're sharing data pretty good. Right? My WordPress site talks to this other thing, through an API.
Now, if I introduce Zapier, what happens if it drops things? Right? Or if I configure it wrong. Right? I spent 1 month wondering why I wasn't getting any email subscribers, and you know what was happening. I set up a native, like, Cadence block for like a form in my builder, and then I used Zapier to send that information to ConvertKit, because I could capture the referring URL, which ConvertKit doesn't let you do, which just really hurts me physically. And I forgot to turn the Zapier part on, and I know what some people are thinking. Well, if you were using, like, Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms, right, or some forms plug-in, but it was storing it in WordPress. Right? No. I was just using, like, some bespoke form, and I'm like, skip the save. Just send it over to ConvertKit. And so that was like, I mean, I'm a dum dum, but, like, if I just do what I do now, which is use Gravity Forms and their ConvertKit API add-on thing
Monica Pitts: Yep.
Joe Casabona: I know that I'm not losing subscribers. And if there's like, a day or a month where I'm like, hey. Nobody signed up. I can go into Gravity Forms and be like, ah, yes. I have that information here on my WordPress site.
Monica Pitts: Well, and if you map one stupid thing wrong, you've got stuff everywhere that wasn't meant to be there an it stinks. And we actually switched our email system because, like, we use Formidable Forms, and we were using MailerLite. So I had to have a Zap for every single form on the site. And eventually, it was just completely convoluted, and also, our MailerLite didn't allow, like, tagging. And so then everybody's profiles were getting huge. Right? Because the only way I could pass the information through was through a Zap into their actual profile information. It was just convoluted at that point. And so we stepped back, and we decided to go with, ActiveCampaign, which some days I kick myself because of and some days I'm happy because of, but it automatically integrates with Formidable. So every time a form is submitted, it doesn't have another thing that it has to go through. And like, the other tricky thing is you want your website to load quickly. And every time that I put a Zap on top of a form, it loads slower.
Joe Casabona: Mhmm.
Monica Pitts: And there are some forms that are triggering multiple Zaps to automate stuff, and then it goes slower and slower to submit the form. And that's not what you want for visitors either because they have like, this caveman brain that's telling them something's wrong. Something's wrong. Evacuate the premises. Like, dinosaur's gonna eat me because it's taking too long. And really, you're just asking that 3rd party processor to do its job, and it's just gonna take a second. Whereas if it's like, integrated natively, it's not gonna take as long, generally.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Or like, at least the user will get some, like, positive feedback more quickly. Right?
Monica Pitts: Yes. Not just the loading forever. Simple. That thing stinks.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's, I ordered. So, like, one of my favorite games ever, Devil May Cry, was on sale on Microsoft yesterday on Xbox. And so, like, oh my god. Great. Like, it's like, this $60 game is currently $15. Gonna buy it. My wife's going away for the weekend. I'm gonna have video game time. Right? I won't, but I tell myself I will because I said I would have 2 of my 3 children still home with me.
Monica Pitts: I was gonna ask, is she taking the kids or not? Because your kids are small enough. Your video game time might be limited to after they go to bed.
Joe Casabona: Yes. She's taking 1, and both of my kids, like, thank the Gods, still nap at the same time. So, Oh. If the Yanks aren't on, I'll maybe be playing some video games. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I know. I'm very lucky, but, I clicked buy, and then, like, the screen kinda went blurry and I didn't even get a loading thing, and I'm like, is this going through? If I click buy again or reload the site, is my card gonna get charged? And like, probably 5 seconds went by, and then it was like, oh, yeah. Okay. You did it. It's in your library now. And I got an email, but I'm like, this was a very weird experience from a megacorp that sells a lot of stuff on this website. Like, it was just a very strange experience.
Monica Pitts: Well. And we all understand that that's not acceptable from like, an employee. Right? Like, if your receptionist waited until the 12th ring to answer the phone and then was like, hey.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: No. I don't know where he is right now. Like, you would never put up with that crap ever. And So I tell people, like, think of your website like an employee. If you wouldn't put up with it from an employee, then you shouldn't put up with it from your website. Your website should do its job. And so by that website blurring out and not acting like a normal website, it didn't do its job. it was like a lazy intern just phoning it in. Right? And so your website shouldn't make people feel like that. It should be like, that's part of a website doing its job, is loading quickly, being easy to find, solving problems for you. That makes it an employee of yours and a working member of your team. So, if you just reframe it into this is a working member of my team, this is an employee. If the employee were giving you a bunch of crap, you would fire it. But people don't fire their websites nearly as, like, quickly as they would fire an employee, which is really saying something. Right?
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: Because we do not like to fire people as entrepreneurs, no. No. No. This is not any fun. Then we're gonna have to do part of their job. Right? But they just let this website thing go on forever.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: And it sucks. So fire if it's not doing its job.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: Because the pain is worth the outcome.
Joe Casabona: Right. Right. And I think, like, reframing it that way is super important because, like, if your website is not performing the way it should, then you're doing your website's job anyway. Right? You just don't think of it that way.
Monica Pitts: Or you're losing business, so you can't do as much of your job because
Joe Casabona: Like and you could have no like, if your receptionist is rude to a customer, you will hear about it somehow. Right?
Monica Pitts: Or if your Project Managers are not actually answering their email or if the, you know, tradesperson that you have working on something, be it a line of code or installing a floor, don't do it correctly. Like, that reflects poorly upon your business. People aren't gonna send you a referral.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: That and that's how small businesses grow. Right? Is by doing a great job for someone and having someone become a raving fan, and then, you know, it all grows up. And but it if your website is a barrier of entry instead of a welcome mat, then it's not doing its job. Whatever. Even if it's the simplest job, it's still not doing it.
Joe Casabona: And you may never hear about that either. Like, that's when nobody was signing up for my mailing list, I had no idea until it went on long enough that even I thought it was strange, and I investigated it. Like, my website wasn't like, hey. No one's joined your mailing list in a while. Doesn't that feel weird? Right?
Monica Pitts: This is for you to track crap. You know what I'm saying?
Joe Casabona: Right. Or, like, people who signed up and filled out a form and was like, you're in. Nobody emailed me. It was like, hey. I haven't gotten an email from you in a while. They were just like, oh, I guess Joe never emails his list. Right? Like, that's you know, sorry to the, like, 30 people probably who signed up and never heard from me. Right?
Monica Pitts: Well or, like, we did an online training. We spent so much energy promoting this training. Like, it literally consumed me for probably 2 months leading up to it because it was a new thing that we were launching, and we sent out all the emails. We did all the stuff. Do you know that we, the signup form didn't have the autoresponder, and none of the emails, the person that sent out the emails and I did not check, sent everyone the wrong link to join.
Joe Casabona: Oh, man.
Monica Pitts: So the online training, no one showed up for except for like, 3 people because one of my, like, friends was like, hey. I'm trying to join this. Like, they're my client, but they're my friend. They were like, I'm trying to join this training. Did you know that this link has not worked for like, weeks? I was like…
Joe Casabona: Oh, man.
Monica Pitts: Yeah. They're definitely, I put a check box in that standard operating procedure, but it's the same thing. Right?
Monica Pitts: As what you're describing with your email list, no one told me that the link was wrong until no one showed up.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: And then I'm panicking, and I'm supposed to be going into sales mode and
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: Real hard to sell from panic mode.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Monica Pitts: Blame.
Joe Casabona: Well, this is I feel that I think a lot of the listeners are feeling that too. And so they probably are wondering if it's even worth it, and we are definitely gonna adjust that. But first, we are going to take a quick break for our sponsors.’
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Joe Casabona: And we're back. All right. So, Monica, we talked about, like, what a website is and why it's important and why it should do some jobs, but then we kind of left things before the break with, like in a little horror story land. Right? Can't, it kinda makes me not wanna have a website. Like, can't I just rely on social media or, like, Google storefront page or whatever? Like, isn't LinkedIn or Facebook sufficient?
Monica Pitts: There… okay. So I have a couple different opinions on this actually because it all depends on your situation, right? But you can ask yourself a few questions to answer whether or not you need a website.
The first one is, do you want to show up on Google for more than just your Facebook page? Right? So, the tricky thing about not having a website and just having social media is when you search on Google, social media posts do not show up in search results. The posts themselves do not show up in search results. And the average life of a social media post is only like 8 hours at this point in time. So you put all this effort into putting stuff out there, only 8 hours, and it's not gonna show to your entire audience. It's getting, like, maybe 20%. Like, that would be great if it showed to 20% of your audience.
Joe Casabona: I feel like 20% is really good on some platforms at least.
Monica Pitts: Exactly. And so, and it's just, it's not gonna show up in Google. And think about how people use Google. So people use Google to solve problems. And when people enter into the buying cycle, they're trying to solve a problem, a problem that your business solves. But if all you have is social media, then, yes, your Facebook page or your LinkedIn profile might show up, but it's not going to show up with the answer to their problem. So when they're searching, you know, for plumbers near me, it's probably not gonna show up. It just doesn't. That's not how it works. So that website, it will show up. The pages on your website will show up. The blog posts on your website will show up. It all shows up in search engines, and so does a YouTube video or a PDF, but only if it's hosted on your website most of the time. So all those things are really awesome.
And then the second piece, might not be the second piece, but let's say it's the 3rd piece that I tell people to think about is that if you've been on Facebook or any of these social media platforms long enough, you know that they change. They shift their algorithms to benefit themselves and their advertising dollars. They're privately held companies. That's what they're trying to do. So, if all you have is a Facebook page, and this happened back in, like, probably 2021. My non-profit, we did social media management at the time. They all had incredible engagement on their Facebook pages. People, everything got seen and liked and, you know, commented on. And then Facebook switched their algorithm. And suddenly none of that stuff showed up for those people anymore. So at that point, you had to rely on another asset to be able to promote your company. You can't control the way that those businesses decide to unfold their next move, and you also can't control the way that they display your content. So, if you're a control freak, you need a website. And if you wanna grow your business and show up for people when they're ready to buy stuff, then you have to have a website too. It's yay.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Your point about social media having like, a shelf life of 8 hours, I had a guest on a couple of years ago who said like, on Twitter, it was 21 minutes. Like, that really stayed with me. And I'm like, I'm gonna tweet this and for people are gonna see it for 20 minutes and then, like, never see it again, and that rang true for a long time. Unless someone retweeting…
Monica Pitts: Well, you spent like 20 minutes probably crafting this thing. Right? If you're doing, especially if you're doing a graphic with it, it could be even longer.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: And then people just, they're, it's not there. It gone. Like, they're not gonna see it. Like, I think that you need to do social media as a business so you don't look like you're dead. But because that's bad. Also, like, if people are thinking about doing business with you and they can't find any updated content anywhere and your website looks like it was built in 1998, then that's also like, your website's not doing its job then. Right? Because it's not promoting your best, you know, storefront.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: And then they get a lot to social media. They don't see anything about you. How do you even exist? Like, you look like you don't exist, and, like, things are just shut down.
Now I have found for some local businesses that are really small in small communities that are very Facebook-driven. So, like, I live in a small community in the Midwest in a very Facebook-driven community, which means I'm out of the loop all the time until the other moms tell me what's going on because I'm not on Facebook. Like, they're like, well, we put it on Facebook. And I'm like, yeah. Not gonna find it. I'm not there. Anyway, but there are some very small businesses here where these people are solopreneurs. All they do is just this one thing. They're super busy. They put a word out on Facebook, and they're fine. Right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: But they don't, they're not trying to grow their business. They're just doing what they're doing. Right. And it can be fine like that too. I do find also that I have started seeing LinkedIn, like, almost like newsletters.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: They're not newsletters. They're like posts. Not the post, but there's something else. Like, articles. That's why they're LinkedIn articles are starting to show up in Google search now.
Joe Casabona: Oh, nice.
Monica Pitts: So if you're not gonna blog on your website, you could potentially do it on LinkedIn and then still get it shown in search results. I don't know why Google's doing that.
Joe Casabona: Until they change it. Right? Like…
Monica Pitts: Oh. Yeah. Well, until Google decides to change.
Joe Casabona: On the same token, right, when, you know, one of the things that, Elon did shortly after he bought Twitter was, like, accidentally Paywall everything. Right? And so, like, for like, 12 hours, nothing from Twitter was showing up in Google. Right? Just like wholesale blocked robots, right, or no robot.txt or whatever. And so, like, if you were hoping, right, that like, some of your content somehow made it somewhere, and you were relying on Twitter, like, it just wasn't. It was a full wholesale walled garden at that point. Right? And, yeah, like a host, a website host could technically shut you down, but that is extremely unlikely.
Monica Pitts: I feel like even if you put all your eggs for people finding you into your Google Business profile because you're a local business, and that is really powerful for you. Google's still looking at all the pieces to decide if you actually do what you say you do. And your website is part of that piece. And so I just feel like if what you're trying to do is grow your business and meet new people and sell things, you just have to have a website that's like a thing.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Monica Pitts: It's a thing that people do.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I agree. And like, I mean, especially the, I've talked about this a few times on this show now, recently, but, like, the past year like, January 2023, I was like, I'm going all in on LinkedIn. It's gonna be great, and it was great for like, 3 months. And then LinkedIn was like, wait a minute. We're gonna change stuff, and like, engagement tanks. And I'm like, is it worth it? It's not. So now I just publish everything on my website, and I will syndicate it, syndicate, copy, and paste it in some cases to other places. But, yeah. Website is a one source of truth.
Monica Pitts: I heard a really good analogy the other day. I was in a training that Jenna Kutcher was doing, and she said that some marketing mediums are like annuals and like, annual like, a plant that you had to plant every single year, and then some of them are perennials. And they come back every single year. And as someone who has a degree in agriculture, that really struck me as extremely true. Because, like, I go to the plant store and I only buy perennials. Like, I buy a few annuals every year because I understand that I wanna have like, bright, big plants in certain parts of my garden. But my goal is to have plants that come back every single year.
And here's the deal. Not all of those plants come back every single year. Something can happen. There's deer. They eat stuff. They suck. But, you know. And so some of it's gonna fall flat. But, usually, at least half of it makes it to the next year.
And it's the exact same thing with your marketing. So when you're doing social media, you're planting those annual flowers, they're gonna be there, and you know they're not coming back. You're not gonna enjoy them the following year. When you do things like even posting on Pinterest, which is more like a search engine, or YouTube, or blogging or podcasting. These are things that live forever. And so they're your perennials that people can find year after year that come up in bloom. Now, not all of them are gonna be awesome. They're not all gonna explode.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: Some of them are gonna fall flat because they derate them.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: And that is what it is. But if you nurture them
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: And take care of them, right, and keep the deer out of them, then they're great forms of marketing. And so my values are in perennial marketing, which is why I love websites.
Joe Casabona: Oh, I love that. Oh, that's so good. So, okay. I think you've probably convinced us at this point. Right? Like, we need a website. Right?
Monica Pitts: We even have flower analogies.
Joe Casabona: We have flowers and we have farmers market analogies. We're just like, we're covering the gambit here. Right? So, but we also live in like, a DIY world.
Monica Pitts: Uh-huh.
Joe Casabona: And a good website is like, hard to make. Right?
Monica Pitts: It can be. I mean, I think it just depends on what you're going after. So one of the things that we did last year was create a program where we helped people set up their templates, work with a professional designer, and then gave them all the videos and tutorials and like, downloadable resources that they needed to finish out the rest of their website.
Joe Casabona: Wow.
Monica Pitts: Which was a powerful asset for us because now we can work with a smaller business owner and help guide them through it. I feel like, as a business owner, there are certain things about building a website that if you learned how to do them, it would not be lost. Like, that information would be powerful for you. Like, you should know how to update your website. You shouldn't feel like you can't go up and put your hours up today because you're gonna be closed early. Right? Or if you're gonna be closed on a holiday. You should know how to add a blog post or take a staff member off of your page. That gives you power, like, gives you control, and it allows you to get things done quickly when they need to be done quickly.
So, but then there's also things that have to be done only one time. And so my belief as a business owner is the things that only have to be done one time, I'm perfectly happy with asking someone to help me with. Because I only have to do them one time. Right? And so, like, with your website, setting up the template, getting all the branding right, getting the styling and everything right to match your, like, brand and make it easy to use even. Right? Those are things that I think you can ask a professional to help you with, and it's not a bad investment because you don't need to know how to do them again for like, 3 or 4 years, to be fair. So why, you know, why spend all your time learning how to do something when you could invest it learning how to do something else that is a perennial? It's the annual versus perennials again.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And we'll talk more about kind of platforms in the accelerated show. But we're both WordPress people. In fact, in the preshow, and before we started recording, I learned that you host with our current sponsor, Liquid Web. So very exciting.
My friends, definitely check out Liquid Web. There'll be a link in the show notes.
So, WordPress, I started using WordPress in 2004, which is, like, a year after it launched. It's changed a lot, and I can't tell if I'm like, being a crotchety old man now by being like, the site editor is hard. It's not what I know, versus if it's actually getting harder. So, I guess the one question I'll ask for the free show, the amuse bouche, I guess, of our pro show, discussion, is do you think WordPress is the best platform for most people given everything we've talked about so far?
Monica Pitts: I think it depends on what you need your site to do. If you really do just need an easy website that has a contact form on it and a frequently asked questions section or you need to, like, integrate a Calendly sign-up, something like that, that you can just put in an iframe, then you could use about any builder. But some of them are crappy and slow, and they just suck. But there's others that optimize well, and I wish I could find something wrong with them, but I can't. And so, and I keep digging, and I don't find it. But, like, but then you're gonna hit a wall most of the time. If you are a problem solver and you are growing your business, you will often hit a wall in a platform that isn't WordPress. Because WordPress has, I don't even know thousands of plugins. And like, I actually did an article about it. I wish I could remember the exact number, but Squarespace, which is definitely a competitor. Right? They only have like 50 or something like that. So it's like the extendability is very limiting. And I think it really sucks because people come to me and they're like, oh, I really need this website to be able to do this because it's such a drain on my staff. And then I look at everything, and I'm like, I'm sorry. Like, it can't happen in this platform. Like, it just, they literally can’t talk to one another. So, I really just think you need to take a look at what you want to do with your website and if it's going to be above and beyond or if you want to extend it in the future, then you're going to wanna use the system that allows you to extend it. And that system for me is WordPress. Now, you know, just it is, what it is.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. I think about it a lot like renting versus owning. Right? Like…
Monica Pitts: Exactly. Yes.
Joe Casabona: When you're like, fresh out of college, right, and you just like, need a place to sleep, like, yeah, get an apartment. Like, don't don't worry about the HVAC which, like, if it goes like, it's gonna tap the savings you don't have yet. But, like, when you're ready and you're like, you need multiple rooms because you have kids or like, you wanna have a garden or put like an extension, right, or like, paint the walls in some cases, right, then you're gonna need a house. So, I think about that a lot.
I was really bullish in November about Square…Nope. Substack for like, my membership and everything because I was like, oh, man. Like, Substack, like, they were going through like a PR nightmare at the time. So, like, my timing was just perfect. But, I was like, oh, this does everything like, really well. And then I noticed that they had 0 integrations. Like, I couldn't, like, pull in an RSS feed. I couldn't Zapier or make.com anything, and I was like, this may not work for me. Like, the fact that it can't integrate and, like, if you are a journalist or a creator who just needs the one platform and it'll make your life easier, fine. Right? But, like, I have a lot of stuff in on, the big thing for me was, like, oh, it would be great if people who signed up for my ConvertKit new mailing list also got subscribed to Substack or vice versa. Either one is fine. And Substack was like, nah. We don't do that. You can export like, you can export all of your data, And I'm like, so I'm gonna manually export the 3 people who are signing up for my Substack every week? Like, that doesn't feel worth it.
Monica Pitts: No. Sounds, it feels terrible.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: That's that redundant thing where I'm like, what is he thing that you have to do that you're like, this is a complete waste of my time. My 12-year-old could do this. And yeah. That yeah. But having said that, not everybody like, needs WordPress. Right. And so, and if you are trying to build something really big in WordPress and you're working with someone who's really new to WordPress, okay. That's tricky because they don't know WordPress really either. Right? And so we inherit a lot of websites that someone who's very new to WordPress, they were solving problems the best way that they knew how. But then the website was basically programmed into a corner, and the client's like, we shouldn't use WordPress. Look. It's so crappy. And I'm like, well, it's only as good as the human behind it. Right? Like, so if you solve a problem this one way and it doesn't allow you to extend it anymore, then that wasn't the right way to solve the problem.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Monica Pitts: So if you are trying to do something really big with WordPress, you should work with someone who this is not their first rodeo, or else it is not going to turn out well. Yeah. There you go. That's my disclaimer here.
Joe Casabona: Agree. Like, nothing will cost you more than an amateur Web dDveloper. Right? Like…
Monica Pitts: A 100%.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Or, like, I always got this one always confused me when I was doing web development work. Yeah. My Web Developer just disappeared on me. And I'm like, how many people, I hear this so much. How does this happen? I have never ghosted a single person who has given me money for anything.
Monica Pitts: And to the point of, like, you should have.
Joe Casabona: You know?
Monica Pitts: What I mean, there's times where you're like, why am I still answering this phone call? Like, I haven't charged this person in years, but they're calling me, so they, I must talk to them. Because once upon a time, they paid me to do this one thing for them. You know?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I think, like I mean, I had a really good discussion with my friend Nathalie Lussier, episode 405 over at [streamline.fm/405] about how we were both at the time taking a bet on, like, Substack because of the network effect. Right? Like a big drawback of WordPress outside of search engines, right, is like, there is no recommendation for WordPress sites. Right? Whereas with Substack, there is. But these are considerations that you're gonna have. What are you prioritizing? if you’re only writing in Substack that’s fine. You know, I was already maintaining a different list and I had a website. And like in the meantime, ConvertKit's WordPress plugin is getting better to the point where, like, I can now create a ConvertKit broadcast from any post that I publish on my website which is super neat. Right? And so it really depends on what you need. And like you said, Monica, like, what your priorities are.
Monica Pitts: And I think even when you're picking those systems, like ConvertKit or like the membership system that you were looking at, man, really just look at them with the end in mind because it is so incredibly time-consuming to switch. When I switched like, email service providers or email marketing companies, I felt I was never gonna dig myself out of that hole. You can't just export an automation from Mailchimp or MailerLite and import it over into ActiveCampaign. It doesn't happen. I mean, in like, as Web Developers, we're like, oh, yeah. Sure. You've got a database. We'll export it. Look. We'll clean it up. Nah. We'll reimport it. Like, is it gonna be perfect? No. But it's gonna be close.
And, you know, no. This does not happen with those other systems, and I literally felt buried for months when we switched because I had to recreate everything. So just maybe even if it's a little bit more expensive, if doing a bunch of marketing and email segmenting or anything. Right? Whatever it is that you wanna do with your marketing and your business, just really make sure that you think it through. And even if it's a little bit more expensive, pick the system that'll let you do it so you don't have to switch it later. Future you will think today is you.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And like future me hates past me. Right? Like, because I did the same thing. I'm like, I do that thing where I'm like, well, I'm a Web Developer, and I know how Web Developers work, and surely they would build this thing that I need. Right? Like and so my membership, like, I've switched so many platforms so many times. And like, one time, I was like, I'm just gonna super simplify like, ConvertKit Commerce. They sell subscriptions, and they have an integration where like, people can automatically subscribe to my members-only podcast feed when they buy it. That's perfect. Right? And then someone churned and didn't lose access, and I was like, hey, ConvertKit. Like, how do I kick off an automation when someone stops paying? And they're like, you can't do that. And I'm like, that's so weird. That feels like a top-five feature for like a subscription-based product. Right?
Monica Pitts: You can even do it like using Formidable.
Joe Casabona: Right. Right. Like…
Monica Pitts: And so that's a form builder, not like…
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And I'm like, how do you have the automation coming in and not going out? Right? Like, and so I was like, you know what? Like, my son cited my membership for the most part. It's just this pro show now, or the pro show now. But, and full disclosure, they are a current sponsor. But, like, Memberful feels like the way for me to go because it's like a thing that integrates tightly with WordPress that also sits outside of WordPress, and I really like that. So, I mean, there's lots of great WordPress membership plugins. I'm really good friends with the Paid Memberships Pro folks.
Monica Pitts: But there's some power in having your membership outside of your WordPress site even in just security. Because if you're gonna spend all this energy building up your WordPress site and then suddenly you invite in hundreds of members that are gonna have some level of access, you know that you're opening it up a lot of things.
Joe Casabona: Right. Right. Yeah
Monica Pitts:. Right? And so, like, my brain went, oh, if you're gonna have 100 of members, like, that actually seems like not the best plan or not the worst plan. Sorry. I said it backwards.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Monica Pitts: But because just from a consistency and a security standpoint, you're not opening the door to as many people in your website, which means less people that can get exploited.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Monica Pitts: Less users.
Joe Casabona: Right. Right.
Monica Pitts: I love hackers.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Okay. So this has been really good. Let's wrap. We've been talking for a while. Let's wrap things up for the main show before we get into the pro show. How do we, you touched on this a little bit earlier. How do we make the website part of our team? Like, what should, where should our listeners spend their time if they're like, yes. I need to do more of this. What's like, the first couple of steps they should do?
Monica Pitts: I think first, you have to identify the time sucks in your business. Right? The things that are repetitive and yucky. So you're looking for the things where you feel like the bridge is broken either in your own processes or in communicating with clients or potential clients. Right? And then from there, you would move on to ask the question, can my website solve this problem? And if the answer is potentially, then you gotta start researching and see how. And that's the long and the short of it. And there's a lot of systems out there that natively integrate with websites, and then there's, god forbid, Zapier. Like, I'm telling you, I have so many zaps, so I can't even say God forbid Zapier. But yeah. So that's it.
And then I would suggest, like, prioritizing that list of things and do 1: Let it go for a little while, see how broken it is, fix it, and then move on to the next one. Right? Because I don't know about you, Joe, but, like, with my podcast intake process, it didn't start out the way it is today. It started out way simpler. Right? And then you're like, okay. Well, okay. So that broke, and then I fixed it, and now it's good. Okay. Now, what if I could do this other thing for me? Okay. Let's try that. And then that broke, and then I fixed it. And now it's okay. Right? So, just don't do them all at once. You'll explode yourself.
Joe Casabona: This is exactly what I tell my clients. Like, they look at my pod like, my whole podcast automation process, and they're like, I can never do that. And I'm like, I didn't, I've been podcasting for a decade. I didn't build all of this on day 1. Right? I built this over 10 years. And so really, I think really smart, really important. You know, identifying the time sucks is, like, the really important part there. Right?
And the research part, this is the thing that I don't always do the best because I make like, hubris-laden assumptions. But I, you know, I interviewed my friend, Kranda Adair, on the show a few I guess, a couple years ago now, episode 303. But, you know, she said treat software like when you research software, act like you're interviewing a candidate for a job. And, like, it's the same thing you're saying. Right? Like, treat your website like an employee. So what questions? Right? What tasks? What jobs are to be done? Right?
Monica Pitts: Define your nonnegotiables with that software, and then I create a stinking spreadsheet.
Joe Casabona: Mhmm.
Monica Pitts: And I am a very visual person, so I have to take a screenshot of it, and then I link back to it. And then I take notes, like, pros and cons, what I think would be really cool. And then after that, I narrow it down to just 2 or 3. I create, I'm like, can I make a free account on it? I make a free account, and I spend maybe 15 to 20 minutes in it. I'm not spending forever. Right. But then I try to go in and I try to do the tasks that I'm going to do most often in the system. And if it feels like it sucks, I get out of there. And that's how I ended up not using ConvertKit because I was building emails in there, which is something that I do really regularly. And I was like, why do I feel like my head is exploding right now? Like, I know how to build, I could code this email. I could code it, and it would be done. Why is this so hard? And so then I was like, I'm just done. I'm just done. I'm walking away. And then I tried some other ones and ended up in Active Campaign which, you know, has its own drawbacks.
Joe Casabona: As a side bar, like, when did you use it?
Monica Pitts: Oh, yeah.
Joe Casabona: I’m not gonna, like, defend it, either way. But…
Monica Pitts: Probably 3 years ago.
Joe Casabona: Okay. So they have changed it.
Monica Pitts: Good for them.
Joe Casabona: I'm not convinced it's like, for the better though. Oh, no. Like, it's definitely better in a lot of ways. But, like, I just, I've given them this feedback. I love ConvertKit. Like, I love the people at ConvertKit. They're super nice. But, like, there's, like, a couple of things where I'm like, I don't understand the decision that you made here, and, like, I feel like I understand more than most, like the software development process. But it's just like someone recently was like, the easiest way to set like, easiest way to write an article and send a newsletter. Right? Or the easiest way to do a newsletter, go. And I'm like, easiest? Substack. It's free to like, you only pay when someone pays you. It's a super simple editor. You don't have to mess with templates. It sends you. And they're like, are you trolling? And I'm like, I am not. I love ConvertKit, but if you only need to send emails, ConvertKit ain't it. Like, ConvertKit is there for the automation.
Monica Pitts: All the other things.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. So like, I definitely, I feel you on that. Like, I really like ConvertKit for a lot of things, and I have considered moving to other places, and I'm just like, I can't. Like, there's a lot of things that are really good about it that keep me there.
Monica Pitts: I pretty much just feel like I'm over a barrel. Like, I'm not, I probably won't switch from ActiveCampaign until I retire.
Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah. Right.
Monica Pitts: But I do have to say that they do, over the last 3 years have rolled out some really nice that, like, I liked their email builder. It was pretty simple to begin with, but they keep rolling out new things for it. And I think it's easier to use with each rollout. And, I mean yeah. I think that's excellent. So I'm not gonna complain about it. It integrates with my form-building plug-in.
Joe Casabona: Yep.
Monica Pitts: So that's a powerful thing too. I just, you know, we know.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Things. The beautiful thing about software is that it could always get better.
Monica Pitts: Yep.
Joe Casabona: And so this is gosh. Was I just talking to somebody else about this on this podcast? Maybe I was on their podcast talking about this. But, either way, Monica, this has been such a, I love these conversations, and I think we have really good advice for, like we got, you know, we got a little technical, but we have a lot of really good advice for the nontechnical folks. So if people wanna learn more about you, where can they find you?
Monica Pitts: They can go over to [mayecreate.com]. That's [mayecreate.com]. We also have a podcast. It's called Marketing with Purpose, and you can find that at podcast, [mayecreate.com].
Joe Casabona: Love that. I will link to that and everything. This is going to be a link-rich show notes page, which you can find in the description of wherever you're listening to this now or over at [streamlined.fm/417]. Monica, thanks so much for joining us today.
Monica Pitts: Thank you for having me.
Joe Casabona: And thank you for listening. Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time, I'll see you out there.