Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Matt (00:00)
The WP Minute back with another special episode with my good friend Cory Miller. Corey Miller, welcome back.
Cory Miller (00:05)
Hey hey, good to be back, Matt.
Matt (00:07)
I gotta do all the things so I don't get arrested. Hosting.com is a sponsor of the WP minute. but none of this content is edited by them, except for Cory who's on the call and he can always edit himself. I can't control that. AI bots can't control that. And we'll talk about AI stuff today. But hosting.com has announced something for a new initiative for the age-old question.
How can agencies partner with hosting companies? How can hosting company customers get in contact with these agencies so that all boats rise with this tide? And we're gonna break down some of that stuff in a moment. Cory though, I gotta ask as dad in WordPress land, are your kids back to school yet?
Cory Miller (00:56)
thank God in like two days. They need school, Matt. Our kids need school and social interaction. So yes,
Matt (00:59)
Okay. Yeah.
Cory Miller (01:03)
in two days.
Matt (01:05)
Jacqueline who works for me here at the WP minute, her kids went back to school like two weeks ago and I'm like, What? Like how d how my kids don't go back until September third, I think. So I
Cory Miller (01:19)
Yes,
Matt (01:20)
am still I got weeks to go in the throes of things.
Cory Miller (01:24)
Thoughts and prayers, bro. Thoughts and prayers.
Matt (01:27)
speaking of heat in summertime, are you doing WordCamp US?
Cory Miller (01:30)
WordCamp yes, yes. and here in a couple of days, flying into even hotter Phoenix. But I love Phoenix and of course getting to see friends and make new friends is always fun. So yep, coming up soon.
Matt (01:45)
Easy trip for you.
Cory Miller (01:47)
Pretty quick trip. I like it.
Matt (01:49)
Yeah.
Yeah. Unlike me. And if Raquel's listening, she knows.
Cory Miller (01:54)
Yes.
Yes. But what a you know, it'll be interesting to see how this WordCamp US is this year. but I'm excited about it. I hope it's amidst all the noise and different things we've got going on in our world and WordPress and the industry and on the web. I'm excited to see who's coming coming and and what they're working on really. I mean, that's the most in interesting thing to me is the great people we have in WordPress and the things they're working on. Like
I I'm not as smart as a many of our friends that you and I know and the developers and different people out there, but I always love learning from them about how they're using things like Russell Aaron's three person team, you know, he's got in GitHub and things like that. It's always cool. I get inspired and also learn a thing or two.
Matt (02:41)
Yeah. It's unfortunate obviously we've been talking this for years now. We just saw another article come out from the repository about the lawsuit. The lawsuit, I mean the excuse me, the court case, I guess, if or the court case, the the jury case won't happen until October next year, if it goes I guess that long. And it's unfortunate that we're still in this lull of
it's not the best phrase, but we're in this lull of this court case and what's gonna happen because that's gonna dictate a lot of I guess Automattic's future, if at all. But what I'm hoping for is that there is a quiet or what I think is going to happen at WordCamp US is a quiet renaissance for WordPress on the AI front, at least, to say like, here's what's going to happen. We've got smart people in place, things are coming. it's just unfortunate it sort of gets like noise cancellation. You turn
put on noise cancellation on your headphones, you can't hear anything on the outside. Like that's what's happening, I think, with WordCamps and what what's happening with to WordPress. And that's not a good thing because I think lots of people on the outside going, What's up, man? Like where's WordPress in this competitive AI space?
Cory Miller (03:54)
It's it's it's terrible timing, honestly, and and I know I've got friends on both at both companies, as you do too. And so I think we're probably all ready for to be done, whatever the the thing is. One of my partners used to tell me that when you when it g comes to legal things, it's everybody put your hand on a hot stove and the first person to take it off is the one that loses. And that's that that's a reality of our
Our legal system and the way things work, but I'm glad we have those things so that these this conflict can be resolved. But I think all of us want to say, let's get it over, let's get it done with. We've got really pressing matters right now to talk about. You mentioned it with AI. Like WordPress is the dominant largest CMS on the planet. It's how the web is powered for the most part, and open source technology behind it. But we need to get back to these things because we
have a real opportunity.
Opportunity in WordPress with AI. And I'm not the technical expert that deep down, but I go, we need to take this emerging technology with this awesome existing large blueprint technology and see how we go far together in the future. And that's what I'm excited about. There's people like
Matt (05:09)
Yeah.
Cory Miller (05:09)
you that are prolific content producers, you know the value of a website, a podcast, and content and all that stuff. WordPress makes all that happen. Now, how can WordPress or I'm sorry, AI?
be used to even propel this further, accelerate what we do with WordPress. And I am eager to get back to those conversations. That's the primary one.
Matt (05:30)
Yeah. I mean I I think even from my own my own you know workings with with AI and obviously deep into it these days, even more so. but chatting with other folks like Mark Sumanski, who's friend of the show and and does a lot of content, and just wanting that ease of like it's weird. It's weird to like go through the the the reflect on like the months, if not years now with consumer AI.
And building things with AI at first, it's like, I'm never going to use this thing. And then they got a little bit better. And I was like, well, I'll make some static websites with it. But then you've got like this muscle memory starts, and you're like, damn, now I want to be able to do that with WordPress. I just want it to be as easy to manage my WordPress site as it has been with these other projects. And I honestly think that this is where what this is what most people, that feeling is what most people want out of WordPress. It's not even like,
Give me another feature, do this thing. Like obviously those are those are still there and the features that people want for website building are are still gonna be there. But I really think like the missing pieces, how easy can we just make it to talk to WordPress and just do the thing we want to do? Cause I think as soon as that bridge gets built, people are gonna come back. Like all those people from like six months to a year f ago who are just like, no, like you're never gonna catch up. Like WordPress is is done for, like static sites all the way and Astro and all this other stuff.
Like I think as soon as we bridge that gap, which is like getting short smaller and smaller every passing day, like we're just gonna have people come back and be like, yeah, I'm just gonna come back to WordPress now because now I can talk to it and I've got the value of community and open source with it, which a lot of people are just like, Yeah, screw that open source and community thing. I just wanna go for this easy thing that I can just chat with. I think the table's gonna turn, sooner rather than
later.
Cory Miller (07:19)
gosh, yes, that's it. Right there, the vision. How do we leverage two incredible technologies for what we're trying to do to make it easier? You know, Rocket.net has an MCP WordPress integration. I love that. I want to hear from the agencies using that to make their workloads lighter, easier, faster, better so they can do other stuff. You know, our dear friend that we share, Justin Sainton he's got the agency of one and
That has opened up possibility and opportunity in his life, which I think is awesome. Now let's apply that to our clients who need direction. I think people are aware of AI, but I mean, we're in technology, so we're right there with it every day. But the large amount of people, I think there's some adoption happening and and agencies, freelancers, WordPress people are the leaders to help others get into that, use that, leverage those technologies, just like we've done for a couple of dec decades now.
On the open web
Matt (08:16)
Yeah.
Cory Miller (08:16)
with WordPress.
Matt (08:17)
Yeah. So I started to eat the the the dog food of like AI taking away jobs. And I'll try to frame this as quickly as possible. but you know, I I built that snowplow app for my local community, won all kinds of awards, got all these things from like local politicians, which you know was a lot of grandstanding on their part, but whatever I was like televising the mayoral's State of the Union speech, all this stuff.
And you know, as the entrepreneur in me as like, well, let's not stop there. Let's see what I can do next. One to serve my community and and two, like let's exercise that entrepreneur brain, part of my brain. So we, you know, I I transferred it over to a three one one reporting system, right? Potholes, down trees, flooding, illegal dumping, like all this stuff. And really started to try to work this into the local government, like, hey.
Hey guys, you all know who I am now. You saw me build this thing. You awarded me this thing. And I've now built this, which we don't have for the city. And people want. They want to report the potholes. They want to report the damages throughout the city. And that's quickly got me to learn how slow local government moves. but that's not the end of the tale. The end of the tale is I've been going back and forth with the new DCM director and
He messaged me the other day and he's like, hey Matt, he's like, the IT team wants to build their own. And they're building their own now. They're building their own app. And this is through, of course, AI. Much like I am using AI to assist me to build this software. I mean, having a background of software, of course, and understanding what consumers need from a product. But now staring down that barrel of, my customer, they're going to build it themselves now.
Because of the same tool that I used to build it. And now they are going, you know what? We're savvy enough now to do this. And that's that's that's something I always knew was coming with AI. And it sort of deflated a little bit. But I'm curious, like as you talk to agencies, have you had them sort of state the same thing where they were gonna go sell a WordPress website to somebody and that client said, you know what, just gonna do it myself.
And we can unpack what the challenge really is moving forward, but I'm just curious, like, have you heard like Boots on the Ground, agencies go, Hey man, we're afraid of AI. It's it's we're losing jobs because of it. Have you started to hear anything like that?
Cory Miller (10:55)
Not so far. And I think because of one thing we both know really well, which is you need that expertise. you and I have product expertise. We've built and shipped products. We've built and shipped communities. We've done those types of things. And I think there are always going to be the do-it-yourselfers, and that's awesome. But I think at the end of the day, they want to major in what they do best and hand off to the experts, at least for this season of time that I think is
is bigger.
Because as we both know, we can have AI do all these things, but there's certain things that you still need some you you need to know to say, put in some security, you know, redo this through security protocols, best practices that we have like in WordPress and on the internet and different things that I I don't think and and also at the end of the day, it's like this will help this technology will help me get there faster and maybe cheaper, but I still need someone to hold my hand right now. Now the technology is gonna evolve on that.
all that but I think we still need guides. We need people that know what they're doing to help us, even with the proposition we can save time and money doing these type of things. So like the team you're talking about with city government, you know, I put most WordPress agency teams against virtually any of those, especially the smaller governments and things, but they can do things. They know things. They have a a a wider area to operate in, but they're embedded in
the thing that they're doing, not a team tacked on to a bigger company that really or a government or whatever that doesn't really know what the ins and outs are. And I think that's where the opportunity becomes for our agencies or freelancers or consultants to be those guides. I mean, if you really base down what we do, we're technologists. We understand how to use technology. We're the ones bleeding edge, testing, breaking, using things. And I think there's
gonna be a place is a place, gonna be a place for those experts to come alongside and help guide.
Matt (12:54)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could sit here in Grandstand all day that the IT team and local city government should not be building the app.
Cory Miller (13:02)
Yeah.
Matt (13:03)
you know, there's plenty of other things that they have to maintain and at and at what point do they stop? Right. And I don't know, it's it's interesting. I I it I'm not heartbroken over it or anything like that. The deal the deal isn't done yet anyway. but it was sort of nice to exercise like, you know, the place that I live, I can use it as a case study.
But at like what point does it stop for internal IT teams? because this is actually interesting, like to think, like put aside local government and tax spending and and stuff like that. Should they be doing this? Should they not? But just like, where does the IT team stop with them going, we have a vendor to build an app? we'll do it. we have a vendor for an email server, we'll make our own email server. Like, at what point does an IT team armed with AI go
there's gotta be clear division here. Like I can't we can't be building an app, we can't be building a web server, we can't be building the website because we just have so much what what about our other duties in the company that we have to maintain? so
Cory Miller (14:07)
Exactly.
Matt (14:08)
that so it's just a it's an interesting point, and I think it's an exercise to see how AI how people balance AI, I guess, as as time moves on. I think if the agency is afraid of losing the business because of AI.
On the other side, AI augments their own team to do more. So it's like, where does that balance come in? And and we don't know until we live through it over the next five years. I see how all this stuff settles.
Cory Miller (14:37)
What occurs to me in your example that you're sharing is two things is one is capability. You know, do I have capability to do these things? And that second is insurance. So I wouldn't want my team at a local government, for instance, to just build their own. I'd want to go, I'm gonna buy the insurance that Matt knows what he's doing. Like emphasis majors on this every single day.
that knows and is getting ahead. And for those that, you know, perhaps are seeing that work go off from their agency onto somebody else, I'd say wait six months and you might get a knock at the door because things change.
Matt (15:16)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Cory Miller (15:19)
Software change, I mean, has vulnerabilities, the systems that we use all get updated and things like that. And those are the classic things our agencies know. My thing is to say remind you that we're technologists. This is our work.
To do this every day. We don't go pretend to be doctors or lawyers, you know, and
Matt (15:38)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Cory Miller (15:41)
but I would say in those instances where you see work being shipped is is keep that relationship because it's going to come back around. I mean, I was just reading an article about Waymo. I've written in Waymo's, you and I might have had a Waymo together in Phoenix for Press Conf, but but it's got glitches. So, you know, if I'm not in that technology every single day.
I'm gonna have to find solutions for that. And I and I think that's the the gift and the burden of technology is things are gonna change, things will break, there's gonna be vulnerabilities out there, and I want experts at the gate managing it that I can talk to. Where an in house person like that, I'm not diminishing their expertise, but then become the in house expert to manage the vendor, the software, the things like that in order to get it done. And we all know they'll get spread so thin. So
Matt (16:30)
Yeah. I mean I I bring it I bring up the story because I I I think it relates to the agency owner who might be selling an e-commerce store or a a large WordPress site to you know, if you're in that if you're in that mid tier to large tier agency, you're selling into bigger organizations that do have the capabilities, like they have the technical chops, but just like my local government example, they have other responsibilities in that business to either build the technology or main maintain the technology.
you know, that that they have. And I think where we shift with agencies, and I, and I'm curious to hear how maybe hosting.com's partnership network helps because I know you have community and I know you connect with the customers at a deeper level. but like I told the the the my local contact when he told me like I think they're gonna build it and he's kind of on my side, at least he that's what he's telling me. But I said, hey Chris, I not only have I already built it,
But I've proven it because it went through a major blizzard and it got millions of page views and database calls while that week was going. So I mean, I proved that that that the technology and it didn't crash at all. So yeah, we could all say Matt vibe coded it, but I understood what I was doing going into it. I understood which pieces of the technology I needed to get this thing running at a high critical time.
Which was like no user login, no like crazy database searches, because I knew what the implications were if I had all that stuff leading into it. It needed to be as fast and as nimble as possible in that emergent time in order for people to to put reports in. So that's so just like a a WordPress agency is going to have to go now to a customer. So the so the job gets a little bit harder on the sales side, in my opinion. I'm curious your thoughts is now you have to walk into the as your as your agency sales call.
Instead of being like, you know, the bar being we do WordPress, it's we do WordPress and I can prove to you that we can do it at a high, at a either high capacity or for your particular market, for your particular industry. We do high volume e-commerce sales. Like now the agency owner has to say, I do this and I can prove it, which has always been the case a little bit, but now that microscope is on top of that agency owner.
to perform in the sales call. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.
Cory Miller (19:00)
Things are big time changing. I mean, we're going through some huge transformations. And just like, you know, when I look back on my career in WordPress, you know, when I started free themes, you downloaded a zip, then you uploaded it to WordPress and all that and activated it. but it we're going through this different change. So we have mastered, I think, what has happened in the last twenty years. And you saw things come out of it and it took a l a it took a couple of years for things to kind of mature out, but
Then you had the advent of WordPress care plans because we recognized, we saw it with clients, and then we innovated on that, iterated on that, became this whole other part of our industry, care and maintenance. the simply the the software managed WP, for instance, was the category definer of I can update all my sets from one panel. But our role has shifted a t a little bit, I think, with the new technology. And it's up to us to get out there and innovative with it.
Use it, learn the technology in and out for ourselves, like you do in the 311 service. You just broadened your knowledge and expertise of that. So now that's you're the person I'm going to ask for that. How'd you go about doing it? That's good stuff. That's how we became experts as WordPress people. And now it's just WordPress with another piece of technology. But I'm seeing and I think there's an opportunity here to even differentiate. Keep the WordPress, keep everything you're doing there, but there's this opportunity
to.
Do those type of things you've done for clients and maybe save them money. So I think our role as experts just shifts a tad to a different perspective. And it's going to be upon us to figure out, they need this. But I think the templates and frameworks are there, you know,
Matt (20:45)
Yeah.
Cory Miller (20:45)
to look at it and go, it's it's still consulting. They don't have expertise, they have a problem and they need an expert. And we're the on the other side to do that. So that's why we got to be carving out significant part of our time.
breaking stuff, testing stuff, keeping an ear open to the new things that are coming out and trying to use those for our own use cases because a guide, I think, is a couple steps apro in front of the person needing help. We gotta do that, or else we are gonna get, you know, ran over and overtaken and forgotten because we're not doing what we should as technologists, which is learn technology in order to help other people leverage it.
Matt (21:28)
Yeah. I wanna I wanna unpack that care plan stuff. I know this is big in the agency space and I'm sick of hearing myself say I don't run an agency anymore, but I talk to a lot of people who do. And I see that phrase get bumped around a lot. And what's funny to me is like, I don't know, I it was probably within the last few months I saw somebody say something like care plans are dead, like don't call it care plans or something like that. You know, but yeah, I grew up in the car industry.
where I sold undercoatings, right? Like I sold extended warranties. And then when I when I told my dad, like I'm done with the family business at the age of 18. And I said, I'm gonna get a I'm gonna get a real job. And then I worked at Circuit City. And then what did I do there? I sold extended warranties to customers. And they would come in with I think the extended warranty on a DVD player back then was like you could come in for two free cleanings a year or something like that across the across the
Cory Miller (22:23)
man, I remember
Matt (22:23)
extended warranty.
So it's just like I'm all like I'm so used to saying, here's the sale, but then to make more money to stay in business, it's the care plan, it's the extended warranty, it's the accessories sold after the fact. It's the follow up call to say, like, how's your website doing? Like a year later, do you need something else to go along with your website? Has your business grown? What else can my agency do? So I'm curious from your point of view, and like when you talk to agencies.
Does the care plan change moving forward in this AI world? Do people continue to need maintenance from the customers? Or do we have to sort of land and expand ourselves as agency owners and say, like, now we do more in order to, you know, keep the retainer bag?
Cory Miller (23:12)
I think the need for care of a website doesn't go away. I I think it can also be extended to these other things that we're talking about with AI development. but the thing I always the reference point I have is I've been WordPress since 2006 or so with started my own blog and all that. Joomla is still out there and there is still market share all these years later, no matter if WordPress and other things have gotten better and all that kind of stuff.
There's still a significant, it's it's smaller, but not in terms of the web. There's still a significant base running Joomla. Like that's one of the things is like, you know, it costs money to change a website to go from Joomla to WordPress, WordPress, whatever that is. And so you still see these sites out there with the percentage of market share, and I just go Joomla, you know.
So I I don't have a crystal ball and I can't predict it, but I just go from a realistic, practical manner, you know, organizations spend thousands and tens of thousands perhaps of dollars to launch their websites and then turn around and go, wait, can that can that be just overnight? No, often not. And so maybe the technology get out gets out there and probably will at some point in the future.
But I go, there's this interim time of people are still gonna need that. And it's gonna be take a long time for 40 plus percent or whatever we're at today of the internet to switch to something different. And I've used, and I I would say I'm a general WordPress user, you know, that's my capability. I could copy and paste, you know, PHP like the best of them back in the day. But I've used Claude and other tools to create pages, and you
go.
it still needs review, it still needs quality check, it still needs tweaking that I might have to break open some of those skills. And I think that that's that's where we're at today, at least from my perspective, where someone goes, you know, redo a whole website on an AI model to be updated and everything. And I still go, you gotta have things like, I mean, I would suspect database and and and different things like you were saying with your project.
Like all those different nuances that you still need to have. It's just not a a magic potion just yet. And so that's still the opportunity where we're gonna take care of you now, your clients now, and then help you walk into it. But I still think about the adoptive technology part of this. You know, the early adopters are all there. The technology is getting better and better every day. However, there's still a big, huge, ginormous part of our population that
doesn't use it to the extent that I do. And I would say I use it every day, all day, 60% for personal, you know, and and 40% for professional, mostly to get clarity. But I go, that's that's someone who works in technology. Like my job is part of that. And there's still things I learned from you and others that I haven't used just yet, you know, and I'm I want to, but I I
Matt (26:21)
Yeah.
Cory Miller (26:22)
feel like I'm ahead of those, the normal people out there just going
To their nine to five jobs coming home and and haven't used it yet. So, but I also think it's we can be scared by it, you know, it feels like a tsunami. I feel that, I see that the tsunami of like jobs and different things coming in into our societies and workforces and everything. And what does that mean? That scares me. Then look at the other side and go, Whoa, so much opportunity for enhancement of life that.
where were personal, whatever that is. And so we're we're juggling those two. We're holding those two at the same time. But I I think it's like anything we can either stall and freeze and fear or walk into it with open eyes and innovate and see opportunities and go for those. And those are the ones I'd bet on that are looking at it going, let's push it to the edge and see what it can do. Work on projects that help me understand it. It's how I got into WordPress.
I wanted to just build my web w my website. I didn't go looking for WordPress. I found it and it made it easier. So I I I think I I understand the fear. I'm there too. But also go, I can sit there and be frozen by it or walk into it and try to blaze my own trail with it. And that's what I hope
Matt (27:45)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cory Miller (27:47)
so many of us in WordPress do because that's who we are.
Matt (27:50)
Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, that's one of the I had a discussion with somebody else and I talked about that. Like the the the real fear that I have for AI in WordPress. and then I I do want to talk about the partnership stuff, agency partnership stuff. but one of the real fears that I have with with AI is I got into WordPress and learned WordPress and not only learned WordPress, but learned how the web worked and how publishing worked.
And how to find clients because I had this level of curiosity to figure that
Cory Miller (28:24)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (28:25)
all out. And because, you know, this is again 20 years ago, you're sitting there going, All right, I got this WordPress thing. I got to put it on a hosting server. I got a database. What does that mean? All right. And I wire these up. And now I install a plugin. What does that do? And there's like you're, you know, you're building the model car. You're building the the Lego pieces, how whatever you know, phrase you want to use.
But there was like that level of curiosity to figure out how this stuff works, which gave you a fundamental understanding of the internet. Like it wasn't just, WordPress, you had to learn the server, domain registration, how IP addresses work, how network traffic flowed. you know, what does it mean when your database gets too slow? What does that mean when you're dealing with a client? Okay, customer service. I have to be, I have to pay attention to all this stuff. And it was like you had to figure it all out.
and maybe those are the golden the golden years. And now AI is just like, here's the answer. I did it for you. It's like, wait
Cory Miller (29:22)
Yeah.
Matt (29:22)
a minute, how did how did you do that? Like what what did you do? And that's the thing that I'm scared of because now there's no more unpacking WordPress and like leaning over and like asking you when I first met you, like, how did you grow that business? You know, how did you get to be one of the first million dollar a year WordPress businesses?
Right. And like that general curiosity that brought the community together. So that is a fear of of mine with WordPress.
Cory Miller (29:50)
It hasn't replaced human experience for sure. There's things
Matt (29:53)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cory Miller (29:54)
that I think maybe it gets there someday. but it's still very, very, very, very advanced machine learning, you know, on pattern
Matt (30:02)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cory Miller (30:03)
recognition. And that's why I like the work like podcast podcast and audio work, 'cause I go, I hope that's being fed into that. but you know what this makes me think of is the I think I'm pronouncing this right, or Ouroboros it's a snake eating itself.
in all this. But there's a an evolving quality to that too, if you think about it. Like we're fear, tsunami over here, and then my gosh, this is panacea. It's helping me. You know, at 50 years old today, it's helping me big time. Like I don't have the
Matt (30:33)
Yeah, yeah.
Cory Miller (30:33)
energy I had when I was 25 and starting my career and all that kind of stuff. But it's it we're we're kind of eating ourselves in that sense, you know, the Ouroboros is going around just like the update scre screen. But I think there's a principle there if we know as technologists
it's like
Life updates, we evolve, and we need to keep with it or else we will, you know, be left behind. and I I I didn't get to your actual question or thought there, I think, but it it's something
Matt (30:59)
No, that's fine. Yeah.
Cory Miller (31:01)
that's made me think about this is like you mentioned government, for instance, being slow. There is a part, one part of that I go thank I'm thankful for that, that there are mechanisms that will slow some of this down to make it
as least disruptive to human experience as possible. there's many things I don't like about it, but at the same time I go, there's a slow process that, you know, laws, the legal things we talked about earlier, because in rush to judgment, mistakes didn't happen. And I think there's a balancing act that happens to that that I'm hopeful for for us humans.
Matt (31:34)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
All right, put you on the hot seat now. I want to talk about this agency partnership. And I've been lucky enough. I think that's the I don't know if that's the right phrase, but I've been lucky enough to be on both sides of the fence, having run an agency and knocked on the doors of hosting companies, like, please, God, give me business. Like I've been I've been giving you business, give me business. And then I've been on the other side, when I worked at Pagley as an account executive.
And having the agencies come at me and go, please, God, give us business. Like, who do you have? we've got a big client that we want to shop with you, but you haven't given me a big client in a while. And then there's like that little tug of war in action. So maybe how how is a hosting.com addressing your agency partnership program? What does that look like? And as somebody who's also lived, I guess, both sides of the fence, like me, like how are you helping shape that?
Cory Miller (32:30)
So, as someone who for the past 20 years or so has made his living from agencies and freelancers building tools and things like that, my heart is there. They're entrepreneurs like you and I, Matt, business owners doing good work in our world and everything. So my heart's there. iThemes and then to postage has tried to get these things off the ground. Now at hosting.com, our CEO Seb came to me and like, We we just want to blow this up and do something good for the ecosystem that we have. We have 700,000.
plus customers today. And there's a part where our work ends and then the agency freelancer consultant needs to take over and help clients. And there's a bunch of those here. So we know that happens. We want them as a hosting company to keep renewing their services and their products and things like that and be successful at it. And then we look at the most hosting programs and it's what are you doing for us, the hosting company?
And we wanted to blow that up and I'll finally get the chance to do that. And that's our agency success network. So no exclusive deals. You don't need to move your clients to hosting.com. But we know there's a win-win here, or a win-win-win, as Michael Scott would say in the office. And that is our customers have a need. Now, not all of them, but some have a need to have professionals build their presences, help with their programs and all that kind of thing. Then
Work with agency success community over the past year and plus with A2 Hosting Now Hosting.com has been providing all the resources we can, tools, training, things like that to agencies. And we've asked little or nothing from them other than give us your email and get into the pro you know, get in and get live streams from Nathan Ingram and things like that. This is the plus 100 for us. And there's a lot here that needs to happen, but the emphasis is this group needs what this group does, let's put them together.
And this is all MVP. This is all starting out for us. So we're we'll gauge how it goes along the way. But you know, like me, if I needed a HVAC, which I did a couple weeks ago, you know, you go to your community and you ask. So we did that on Facebook for our neighborhood and found a great HVAC service provider. Same things there. So for those that don't have a referral or a good person they can contact to help them build, maintain, and launch their web work, we're vetting.
initially some of those and we want WordPress people to be the first to be there. we know so you and I know so many agencies out there. I just we we want to do what I finally wanted to do is just build that ecosystem where they can win together. And we're just in the we're just there. We're their provider, right? So the they fill out a quick form, we scan through those, just make sure everything's good to go. Sometimes we'll want to have questions for that for that, but it's really just to say
When they have a need, our team can go, here's our partner directory. And they can see that we've got significant presence in Kenya, India, US, Europe. We've got customers all over the globe. So we're trying to find those so they can get connected to each other. And it's just a simple referral. We're not trying to replace like clutch dot you know, clutch or anything. We're trying to
Matt (35:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Cory Miller (35:46)
say, like, let's put people together, at least give them a little bit of a head start to find something, someone good.
And for me, selfishly, honestly, it's promoting awesome agency owners. Finally, with no
Matt (35:57)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cory Miller (35:59)
real strings attached. Just there's one string, deliver. Do the great job you know you
Matt (36:03)
Right, yeah, yeah.
Cory Miller (36:04)
can for the client, customer, because we want them to build and grow. And so that's the equation we put together. It's very simple fix, no exclusivity, no having to move stuff and all that. And yeah, if they want to join our affiliate program, things like that, I want you to continue to get rewarded. But
It's really that simple premise I tried to do over and over at poststatus, which was really build our agency community. And now it's just the triple win.
Matt (36:28)
I know it again, like you said, it's still early days and it's still a little bit of a an MVP or moving target as you build it out. But are you thinking in the early days that the hosting customer must have like a minimum? Like you must want to minimally spend five hundred dollars and then we connect you with somebody, or are you thinking like, hey, if somebody's just asking us to build out a landing page, maybe we hand it over to one of these agencies?
Cory Miller (36:51)
See, that's a good thought. And that's what helps kind of create this. I'm not creating that. We're co-creating it with all the people involved. But no my thought was no. I mean, there's freelancers or solopreneurs that just want to do a maintenance program or have whatever they do for their starter basic site. And I think there's customers on this side that have those needs. So we haven't done that if we haven't done that, but we're we're all open ears to see how that does. I think eventually we're starting with 50 fo founding partners at least.
And so I'm personally recruiting people as as best I can and then sharing it with our customer base and our social channels and here to get the word out. But that's gonna likely grow the 50. It's gonna be more. And so then that's a good problem to have for me because how do we
Matt (37:37)
Yeah, yeah.
Cory Miller (37:37)
help connect that customer to the right thing they actually need? So I've thought about okay, here's the basic packages you might offer to kind of slim down that, you know, they don't want to call 10, 10 people.
You know, they want to
Matt (37:50)
Right.
Cory Miller (37:50)
get a couple that they go, okay, I feel good. I'm gonna go with this one because I like that personality, whatever they do, their process and stuff like that. That's our thoughts, but we're open to ears, you know, we're open ears here about how best to do it. The first one is just connecting people together and then refining that algorithm over time as best we can to match, not match, I shouldn't say match, refer and showcase really great providers.
And knowing the needs of our customers, that's another part we need to do. We we know some of those things. They might want just an AI launch website type thing to start and roll out their business or their idea. But I think it's gonna be all over the map 'cause we've got customers all over the map too.
Matt (38:32)
Yeah. Yeah. And and I this maybe go back to what I was saying earlier, like the if you're an agency walking in the door now, like you're going to have to really show the customer that you know their particular market and you can solve, you know, their problems. So like your HVAC example, if somebody has an HVAC website and they're saying, you know, the site's outdated, we need to update it. Who do you have? You're gonna want to pair them up with somebody who's done HVAC websites before, right? I mean,
Cory Miller (38:59)
Yes.
Matt (38:59)
somebody might have a dentist website and the dentist websites look great.
But they're not gonna know the needs and requirements of of somebody who's running an HVAC business per se. So
Cory Miller (39:08)
Exactly.
Matt (39:09)
yeah.
Cory Miller (39:10)
I've done a lot of work with mental health treatment centers and there's nuance to that language, just like there is in every industry. So on the forum, we actually asked like what industries and like let's be honest, let's pick three, not everybody, right? So let's pick three because some of I think every in industry has its own unique needs and jargon and things like that, and pairing those with the right agencies that understand that. So we ask about ideal clients and who they serve best, what they do best.
And being honest about that, like we're trying to push down, like be really honest. If you're a freelancer and you do care plans like none other than just stay there and we can w then we can share with their client base. I think by the way, you mentioned care plans earlier. I think there's a tremendous opportunity there, you know, not just maintaining technology, but strategy and growing their business, looking at themselves like partners, which I have throughout my career.
you know, increasingly every year it's just like, no, I'm in partnership and it's lowercase P partners. But I think those agencies and service providers that think of themselves as a partner are the ones that are gonna win long term, in my humble opinion. But
Matt (40:21)
Yeah. I mean yeah, it's you know like you the other thing that you were mentioning too that goes right alongside those care plans is like do is it the f fight or flight of of the AI stuff? Like do I lean into this or or do I you know I steer away from it? And my God, there are I've talked to I have a c contractor who built a shed, new shed for me. I just had a new fence put in. and like there's so much that that these guys could be doing.
With AI in terms of like just streamlining the process. Like I asked them about like the measurements and the layouts and like what's the cost and all this stuff? And it's like, okay, I'll get it to you, I'll get it to you. It's like weeks go by. And I'm just like, what is the cost? Where are you putting this stuff? Do you need to come back for the measurements? And I just think to myself, my God, if you guys just leveraged a single project in Chat GPT and just had the stuff there, that simply reminded you.
To follow up with me and intake like my measurements and like the layout of like where they were plotting this stuff out, you'd be making so much more money. And I and there are those folks who will always just be technology adverse because they are busy running the business, which I totally understand. But at some point you get to a size of a business where it's not just you digging the stakes for the fence anymore, building the shed, like the two contractors that I hired.
You're showing up in a nice brand new Silverado. You don't run the business anymore. I mean, you're not, you're not building the stuff anymore. You've got people who do the stuff for you. It's time to take advantage of this technology. And that's where I think we go as as the technologists. you know, we sold websites, but now if you want to lean into it, you can lean into the technology of AI for your customers. WordPress website and intelligence, you know, on the side.
Like let me bring that intelligence to you. Which could be CRM, it could be a mail platform, but it could be all run by an agent that you curate for them. 'cause they are never gonna touch that, not in the next decade. they'll go down fighting without it for sure. I think.
Cory Miller (42:37)
Yeah. You
I just interviewed a couple of weeks ago Brandi Lawson and FieryFX and she was talking about like old s like interior designers and the high end luxury ones and basically helped them do one simple thing we've probably been use using for a while now, which is recording meetings. So you have a transcript, summary and everything. But it was important to them in the process for their clients because expectations get out of whack and things like that.
I mean, that's a very simple way for us to share benefits, help be the guide, be the experts to our clients. And there's probably a hundred more in that. But like, yeah, recording meetings, we do that internally here because we're on different time zones or teams spread throughout the world and it's a way to catch up, but also have historical understanding of what's going on in the business. I mean, why not? Those tools are very cheap.
And like the HVAC and the different people you're talking about, there's a lot of room for innovation there. check out like you know, with my HVAC quote for instance, for me as a consumer, I can throw those quotes into chat and ask for thoughts and things like that. But from a business owner side, yes, like your your data's there, your financial data. What are the opportunities? What are the missing points? What am I spending money on that might not just ask those questions, see what comes back.
Then it's up to our human discernment to see if that's right or wrong. But yeah, I mean, there's everything in f few and far between. But I would say for any agency owner, freelancer consultant out there that think of the the ways you use it and it could probably be applied and used and you'd be, you know, lifted up as the hero to just impart some of that knowledge back. Like care plans, for instance, Matt. I'm like, why did why do HVAC not have some kind of quarterly care plan? There's some that do, I think, but it's like I forget to
change my filters. I
Matt (44:34)
yeah.
Cory Miller (44:34)
forget to wash out my, you know, air conditioning appliance things, whatever they are outside. You know, I'd rather pay someone and then I know if something breaks and they're checking things, like there's an opportunity right there for an agency owner to talk to those traditional service companies about ideas.
Matt (44:51)
Yeah.
It's accountabil accountability as like as I like to tell my wife. because like,
Cory Miller (44:56)
Yeah. Yeah.
Matt (44:57)
you know, I always hire somebody to do something. I don't do it myself because if it breaks, if I did it, then I'm accountable and I don't want to
Cory Miller (45:04)
Exactly.
Matt (45:04)
have that conversation. I would rather just pay somebody that I know has d has done it right. And if it does break, I get to go to them and say, This is broken, come fix it. And there's that sort of level of accountability. So
awesome stuff. Where where can folks go to if they're I know I know it's a pilot program right now, you've you you're inviting people, but where can they go to apply if they're an agency or freelancer to the partnership?
Cory Miller (45:29)
Love for WP Minute community to go to hosting.com/agency. There's a form right there. Hosting.com forward slash agency. Take three to five minutes. Be honest. Be in depth if you could. Really, you know what you do best, who you do it for. And that's it. Then it goes into our team. And when it by team, I mean Katie and I reviewing those. We may ask some questions. for a lot of people that we know, it's it's gonna be a fast and easy one. And we want to promote you and put you in front of our customers.
And I want to say at the beginning, I didn't get to say you said sponsor hosting dot com. Proud sponsor. I'm I'm very proud
Matt (46:05)
Ha ha ha.
Cory Miller (46:06)
that we're sponsoring the WP Minute, 'cause you and I go way back and we talk about this. We gotta support the media, the communities out there, like WP Minute being a standard bearer for us. And so I'm proud that we finally got that done. So
Matt (46:20)
Yes, they I am a I am a happy recipient of that sponsorship and hosting dot com is a proud sponsor. So Corey, thanks for hanging out today. Hosting.com/agency. Hosting dot com slash agency. Fill it out, freelancer agency and then you'll hear back from the team. Cory thanks for hanging out today.
Cory Miller (46:38)
Thanks, Matt.