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Discover new WordPress opportunities through stories told using Gravity Forms. WordPress developers and agency owners rely on Gravity Forms to solve complex problems for their clients. Breakdown explores their stories to extract the most useful lessons for our listeners.
Join podcast host Matt Medeiros with special guest appearances from the team behind Gravity Forms to stay up to date on the next opportunity for Gravity Forms + WordPress. Whether it's a new Gravity Forms add-on or a new way to use our e-commerce features, Breakdown is the WordPress podcast you want to be subscribed to.
Welcome to Breakdown, a podcast all about Gravity Forms and WordPress. And I'm your host, Matt, and I talk to folks in and around the Gravity Forms and WordPress space, and how they use Gravity Forms or WordPress to get the job done. What goes into a Gravity Forms and WordPress project? How do they run their agency, their freelance, or if they're building some kind of unique project with WordPress and Gravity Forms, we wanna talk to them. I wanna interview them, and I wanna learn more about how they use our favorite open source software.
Speaker 1:If you're looking for previous episodes of Breakdown, head on over to gravityforms.com/breakdown. You can also subscribe to the podcast anywhere you get your podcast by searching for Breakdown Gravity Forms. Follow us. Subscribe to us. Share us with others.
Speaker 1:Let's get into the show. Hey, Karen. Welcome to Breakdown.
Speaker 2:Hey. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Guppyfishweb.com. Guppyfishweb.com. That's your web design studio. We're gonna talk all about that stuff today. How how you use Gravity Forms, what you do with WordPress, how you service clients.
Speaker 1:We're in an interesting time, I think. I talked to a lot of agency owners, and everyone's trying to figure out how to get the clients these days, how to keep them going. Is AI taking over everything? Is it helping? Is it you know, are customers using it instead of us?
Speaker 1:I'm excited to dive into all of that. But how long have you been running Guppy Fish Web?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. Since 2009. The first websites I did were in tables, if that tells you anything. Yeah. And then I did I used to code from scratch using HTML and CSS, and then I discovered WordPress.
Speaker 2:And I was like, okay. Why am I building every site from scratch when this is done out of the back out of the box so well? And I can just hack the code to make it look what I want. So that that was nice. I wasn't creating, you know, CSS style sheets and making sure that every margin and padding and all of that stuff was was working anymore.
Speaker 2:So yeah. It was a game changer for me for sure.
Speaker 1:Do you remember how you sort of launched yourself into into WordPress? Like, how you stumbled upon it and then how you kinda, like, learned how the the whole thing came together? Do you remember that moment?
Speaker 2:I don't I I think I remember a friend saying, hey. Have have you used WordPress at all? And this is what it was still not super widely used. And I was like, I I don't know. It's for blogging.
Speaker 2:You know? I don't I don't know that I'm gonna be building websites with with a blogging tool or whatever. And then I kind of I just played around with it, and I was like, no. Wait. You can do an awful lot more than this than with this than just blog.
Speaker 2:And then more and more people started using it. And I was like, this this is kind of a no brainer as far as me being able to put more out to the world without, again, starting from scratch with every single site.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I wanna talk about, like, how you've structured the agency. I see two interesting things that a lot of folks maybe don't do for because they just haven't, you know, narrowed down on it. Two things that you're doing. I see under the services section, have a focus for on churches and nonprofits, which is great.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, I think it really helps it helps both the agency owner to understand, like, what's the best lane for me to work in? Like, where do I do my best work serving the the the best customers that I I wanna work with? So that's really cool to see that you have that focus. And then you have a free website evaluation tool as a call to action right on the website, again, helping you qualify customers and get customers to, like, engage with you right out of the gate.
Speaker 1:I think these are really two cool things that you you're doing here. Thanks. But before that, like, do you remember a day where you were just accepting any customer? And what stories do you have from that that people are
Speaker 2:just Oh
Speaker 1:my god. I'll build any website.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. I mean, it was definitely you'll pay me? Sure. You know? But, you know, that I think everyone has that as they're starting out.
Speaker 2:My approach to websites has really evolved going for from where I first started, it was just like, okay. People need a website. You know? And one thing that I talk to my clients about is that your website should be your most valuable employee. It's the only part of your organization that never sleeps.
Speaker 2:It never goes on vacation. It never takes a sick day. If it's down, you need to make a phone call. You know, it's no owner or nonprofit operator can say that. Right?
Speaker 2:It's the only part. And so for that reason, it should work for you. Whatever your goals are, your nonprofit or your, your website should advance those goals. So when I really became more focused on people's goals and on advancing those goals with their website, I started to kind of niche down a little bit and work with more nonprofit nonprofit focused community.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the harder things. Like well, I mean, I I I don't build websites anymore. I talk to a lot of folks that obviously build websites here at Gravity Forms and, like, trying to figure out what their needs are.
Speaker 1:But I ran an agency for a decade. I started in 2007, stopped around 2017. And one of the hardest things that maybe even still exists today is, like, getting the customer to understand what you just said. The website doesn't sleep. Like, this is an asset to the business.
Speaker 1:This isn't just, like, a Post it note on your local, you know, cafe corkboard. This is something that should and especially in your case, probably, with nonprofits, this is getting donations. This is signing up to, like, crucial event information, like, who's donating, where does the money go, who are we helping. And once you can, like, automate this thing and and get it working for that cause, like, light bulb
Speaker 2:goes automation too is the key. That's another thing that I really work with clients on is, like, listen. You know, there's no reason for you to keep doing the same thing over and over. So if we can set up a form, in WordPress or, you know, if we can set up some automation for you, then now you're freeing your time up a little bit to help the people that need it. One of the things I tell my nonprofit folks is that, you know, for a business time equals money.
Speaker 2:But for a nonprofit time is help. And I was I was talking to someone, I'm in the Richmond area, and I was working with an organization that helps, they're one of the main organizations that helps with the homeless population in the Richmond area. And I I mentioned that to them. I was doing, like, a whole audit of all of their systems and everything. And I said, you know, I said, you guys are just looking for for files and doing the same things over and over system wide from the surveys I've done, you're you're missing you're missing, like, two days a week of time that you could be, and and it was like a light bulb went off for her.
Speaker 2:And she said, I said, time is help for you guys. She goes, so all of that time that we're spending being unorganized is time we could be helping an unhoused person. And I was like, exactly. So anytime you can use your website or your systems on the back end to free yourself up to help people, that's really important in the nonprofit world.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How do you deal with and maybe it's maybe not an issue, but sometimes, like, when we set up these automations on the web oftentimes or through the website, whether you it's like, know, for instance, using Gravity Forms to connect up to Zapier to send data somewhere else or Mailchimp, Klaviyo, whatever it is that you're connecting up to. Sometimes, like, those automations have to the customer's back end has to change a bit, like their back end process. They're like, oh, now I have to look in Google Sheets. I've never had to do that before.
Speaker 1:How do you do you find yourself sort of coaching people or consulting people? I guess the better question is, is there opportunity for the agency or the freelancer to coach people in that new process? Like, not just set up the automations, but to help them understand how to leverage it in their organizations. Do you find that at all?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I I pretty much start with every client having a what I call a road mapping session, where we dive deep into what are your main costs, what are your main goals, what do you want to see, What what do you wanna see your organization doing in the next year, in the next five years? And then all the recommendations that I give them are based on those findings. And in many cases, it's these are the tools that would help you do those things. This is the way that that would work.
Speaker 2:And then, again, with that homelessness that homeless organization that I was talking about, I stayed on with them. I did trainings with their staff. I did some staff meetings and basically helped them implement everything and did a very gradual handoff because I didn't wanna be like, okay. Did it. Here.
Speaker 2:There you go. And I don't work that way. I wanna make sure that people succeed with the tools that I'm giving them. And so I'm a former teacher also. So I think teaching comes very naturally to me.
Speaker 2:And so being able to train the client on what it is that I've done, why I've done it, and how they can move forward with it is really important to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. For sure. Let's just, you know, throughout the two letter acronym that everyone's talking about these days, AI, of course. You know, great a lot of great things for that automation process, like to analyze things, to summarize things, to help people understand sentiment or something like that in, let's say, a contact form. Really powerful things, but also for folks like you and I, people are now going, I can build a website.
Speaker 1:I can just build a website in literally five minutes. How has AI impacted your business both positively and negatively,
Speaker 2:if at all? Well, for the my business, the business end of things, it's it's really helped me. I don't let it write for me. I like to write and I feel like if I you know, anybody who relies on AI to write too much for them or to create too much for them, your brain starts to get mushy and then you can't do it without the AI tools. So I will tell it, hey.
Speaker 2:Here's an article I'm working on. This is the target audience, and I'll give them the whole persona. Like, this is this is what they're struggling with and everything else. What pushback can you give me on this article? So I do use it as a sounding board.
Speaker 2:Another thing that I do is if I have surveys that, you know, again, if I have surveyed an entire organization and they have a lot of employees, it's not easy to go through and aggregate all of that. And so I will have it all in a in a table, and I will upload that to AI and be like, okay. What are the insights here? What are in the in the free form typing part, not the multiple choice part? What do you what repetitions do you see?
Speaker 2:You know? What themes are throughout? And I'll use that to help make rec recommendations. Another way that I used it was I met in this organization. I met with every single person, and it was a pretty decent sized organization.
Speaker 2:And so I took the transcripts. I recorded all the meetings, took the transcripts, and I added them to a project within the AI. And I had, you know, all the chats within that project were having to do with that stuff. And so I would add the chat transcripts to it. And then before I would get on an on a follow-up meeting with the person, I would you know, thirty minutes before the meeting, would I would hop on and go, okay.
Speaker 2:Because it was it was really hard to keep everybody straight. So I would be like, okay. Who is Margo? Tell me who Margo is, what their responsibilities are, and what they were struggling with the last time we talked. And I would just you know, I would get a little paragraph.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. Well, they they they work with great writing and, you know, their biggest challenge was not being able to, you know, do whatever. And that was huge because then I looked like I had everything together even if I sometimes Yeah. Maybe didn't. So in those ways, it's really helped.
Speaker 2:I have not had a whole lot of clients. Most of my clients aren't super technically savvy. You know, if you think about the nonprofit slash church world, there it's not a lot of people who are sitting around talking about AI a whole lot. I haven't had a whole lot of people be like, well, I can just get AI AI to make the site. Okay.
Speaker 2:You know, I haven't had that in my world. I've heard people talking about it in, other spaces, but and the the way that I should just go to the eye doctor for the rolling of my eyes that happens is, you know, maybe a little out of hand.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's the crossover between what I'll call your stack, air quotes, your stack for churches and nonprofits? Is there a crossover of, like obviously, they're both entities are going to need or both types of organizations are gonna need Gravity Forms for a contact form or whatever, but is there a crossover there that helps you with the process of building websites for them? Like, even though it's two different organizations, you're not, you know, having to go into this bespoke at every single customer, or maybe you are. But is there, like, a similar blueprint that they all share in terms of their stack, WordPress, Gravity Forms, some kind of email platform?
Speaker 1:What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. I mean, everybody needs those things, especially Gravity Forms is honestly one of the first things that I put in. I have one I work with a a college marching band, actually. It's my alma mater. I went to East Carolina University.
Speaker 2:Go Pirates. And I do their I was a music major. I do their mark their It's hard to find a web person who speaks music. So, I do their website and their social media, actually. And I tell you what if that whole organization isn't pretty much being run on Gravity Forms without them knowing it.
Speaker 2:Because right now, we have students registering for preseason camp. That's all happening in Gravity Forms. I've got Zapier throwing everything into spreadsheets. I've got, you know, all of the events where they have high school bands come, that all of the registration happens through Gravity Forms. And the director, I mean, he doesn't know.
Speaker 2:He doesn't care how it gets done. He cares that it does get done. But but yeah. So everybody uses that. You've always got some kind of security, something or other that you're putting on just because people have too much time on their hands and try to hack sites.
Speaker 2:But As far as WordPress goes, there's there's definitely a set group of things that I use. Yeah. And everybody just about everybody needs email. Sometimes what I recommend for a nonprofit might not be the same as what I recommend for some of my commercial customers. But for the most part, yeah, there's a lot of overlap.
Speaker 1:Do you do donations with Gravity Forms on some of these nonprofit sites, or do you use a different platform for donations?
Speaker 2:If they have a platform they're paying for that will you know, that I can embed or whatever, then then absolutely I'm gonna use that. I use I actually use Gravity Forms a lot because I can do the whole, will you cover the transaction fee for this, donation or for this purchase or whatever it is that the nonprofit is doing. And, you know, then I can have it calculate on the back end Yeah. What that fee is going to be. And so you can't really do that as easily with some other things.
Speaker 2:So yeah. And Gravity Forms connects with just about every payment platform that any of them are gonna be using. So yeah.
Speaker 1:I I'd imagine on the nonprofit side, if a customer comes to you and they already have an online platform that they use and it's okay. We can we can name them if if you know of one that's, like, super popular that a lot of nonprofits use. Because I'm interested to learn too. I'm sure that's the hardest part, maybe but the hardest part to pry away from somebody, for lack of a better phrase, to be like, I can build this on Gravity Forms and be like, no. We just wanna stay here because we know it works, and and payments and stuff like that is super important.
Speaker 1:Is that one of the hardest things to deal with with with a nonprofit?
Speaker 2:More with churches than nonprofits Okay. I would say, because there's so much software out there right now for, like, church what they call church management software, and almost all of them will allow people to do their giving through them. In many cases, they that platform has they have their own page or whatever on the platform that they need to use. And in those cases, I'll just be have a give now button that opens in another tab and goes direct directly to that thing. So, because of that I I usually don't even log in to it.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay. If you wanna use it, that's fine. I just need a link, and I'll use it that way. But some but some churches are really attached to whatever it is, and some of them are really good. I would say my favorite is Planning Center.
Speaker 2:I've used that, I've used that a lot. And some of them are really not good at all. I have one in particular, not naming names here, but, in order to give, the person has to set up an account with with the the software, with the platform. And so sometimes you have someone who has passed away, and they're, in in lieu of flowers, please give a donation to whatever whatever church. And so you might have someone who is out of town, who doesn't go to that church, but they would like to give a memorial donation.
Speaker 2:They don't need to create an account on your platform in order to do that. They they need to just be able to give and get a receipt slash email confirmation, and that's it. So but some of some of the some of the churches are really, really attached to those platforms. So
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the things I I think that scenario right there is something that I think about a lot, obviously, because I work at Gravity Forms, but I also manage a nonprofit site that my friend started a couple years ago. And, like, the way that we do donations, like, even for that, like, you know, they'll they'll they'll constantly rotate in memory of, like, donations that people can that people can do. And I'm like, man, it's just it's just so easy with with Gravity Forms to do something like that.
Speaker 1:Another thing we do is a basketball tournament, a three on three basketball tournament, a golf tournament, and, like, all of those requirements that have to go into registration and stuff like that. Like, these other platforms, they're they're not gonna do it. And then I I wondered to myself, like, how do other nonprofits, like, do these things without the flexibility of Gravity Forms? Though, you know, I will admit there's a learning curve there, obviously, like you have to be on WordPress number one, but you kinda gotta know what how Gravity Forms works.
Speaker 2:At the same time, you can say, you know, this donation is in memory of, in honor of, or just a donation. And if it says in memory of, well, then you have your conditional logic that comes up that's like, okay. Well, who is the person and and, would you if you'd like us to send a thank you note, what is the, email address or physical address that you would like to do it like to do that with? But that is one thing I love about it is the conditional logic and and how based on what someone has said, you can be like, okay. Well, here's I need more information about that thing.
Speaker 2:So Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. A lot of them
Speaker 2:you're right. A lot of them don't have that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the obviously, again, I know I'm biased. We're on a Gravity Forms Podcast here. But I am a cheerleader for for WordPress, you know, at its core.
Speaker 1:And, yes, there's a learning curve, but that open source, open market nature allows nearly anything to be built for a particular solution, again, as long as you know it. And I think that's I think that's great. I mean, I look at it in the face of of AI, some of the stuff we were talking about before, and a lot of people say things like, well, I I can just make a form now with with AI and just paste that code, or I can have it make a plug in for me for WordPress, and it it's just the forms right there. Yeah. That's great.
Speaker 1:But then there's all this other stuff that you eventually grow into, especially if you're a service provider like us, where you're like, okay. Now I've got another customer who has another request and something custom over there. And you're doing that all piecemeal. Gravity Forms just has the whole suite already done. Right.
Speaker 1:And you just install it and run
Speaker 2:with it. Know, you're right. There there is a bit of a learning curve, but, I mean, it's that anything is gonna have a learning curve. And once you've done it, you know, you know how to do it. And Google is free.
Speaker 2:And anything I haven't like like, I didn't until a few years ago, I didn't know how to do the, if you want to cover the transaction fee. You know? I didn't okay. Well, there's I know there's a way to do it, so let me find out. I feel like do what you know really, really well and Google everything else.
Speaker 2:And, you know, the the it's not difficult to find the the resources to learn the things that you need to learn in order to make it happen. So Yeah. And I'm fine saying I don't know everything. You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, again, I know how to Google.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Yeah. No. I mean, I I think I mean, that's one of the great things about about WordPress. And I think about this other thing too, what you were saying before about writing with AI.
Speaker 1:Once you stop once you start using just AI as as the writing tool of choice all the time, you forget how to, like, sit down and look at the cursor blinking and go, how do I start this thing again? Like, how do I get my my memory to go? I think the same thing How is
Speaker 2:do I wrap this one up?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'll be like, oh, this
Speaker 2:is such a good article. Yeah. And I need to land the plane. The plane cannot fly forever.
Speaker 1:Conclusion, the end. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes. And in conclusion and then it sounds like a fourth grader. Yeah. And in conclusion, that is how I feel about
Speaker 1:I I I feel that I feel that same thing with this is just a bit of a tangent, but it's along the same lines of that. Like, I think one of the greatest things that WordPress did for me when I first started using it was I got a full education doing the same thing that maybe that you did. Like, wait, how does this work? Let me go look that up and figure it out. Oh, how does this connect to that?
Speaker 1:Let me go look that up and figure this out. And then before you know it, you've got this mental diagram of, like, how the web works. Like, how does someone search for a site? How do people come in? How do you publish content?
Speaker 1:That's the thing I'd I'd really love folks to stick to hold on to, because AI is just coding everything. We're we're never gonna have that that hardworking part of our brain anymore.
Speaker 2:Now have I had it look at my code before? And and I'm like, what what is not here? And, you know, it it found, like, a closing bracket I had missed one time that was breaking everything. And I was like, oh, okay. Great.
Speaker 2:That saved me. I don't even know how long. So, yeah, I'll have it find a mistake in code for me for sure. But I don't I don't want it to write for me because I wanna still be good at it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So we're just wrapping this up and and just talking about, like, the future of your business and and maybe just, like, your future outlook of things. Is there, you know, a new territory, a new service that you're that you're going into, right, like maybe out your to enhance the business, to stay on the cutting edge of things. Is there anything you're starting to look at for the rest of the year in 2027? Like, how am I gonna make this how am I gonna continue doing this service based business? Anything new and exciting you're looking at?
Speaker 2:One of the things that I've been working on that I kind of I kind of started doing with this one nonprofit was helping people with their internal systems. I've also done that with some churches. Like, I've helped them organize their file systems, and I've helped you know, and with the I do digital communication, you know, for so that that's email, that's that's social media, that's I'm not doing as much hands on social media. I'm more doing consulting with that. But if your internal stuff isn't working, then your external stuff isn't gonna come through.
Speaker 2:And that's you know, if your internal communications are not good. So, like, I've in my last couple of, articles that I've written, I made up Marge. And, Marge is this character, and I made her she's like a me, you know, like a Nintendo me because everybody's playing the, Tamodachi life. And, basically, she's the person at your, at your nonprofit or your church that knows everything. She's the one that has all of the answers, and she's the one who, you know, everyone interrupts to ask things.
Speaker 2:She knows where the copier paper is. She's constantly if the ceiling leaks, she knows who to call and all of that stuff. And one of my, one of my recent posts a couple weeks ago was, well, what if Marge got abducted by aliens? So you know? And a lot of people talk about, you know, you have that key one key person and what if they got hit by a bus or something.
Speaker 2:That's a little bit morbid to me, so I've tried to put a little fun spin on it. So I have Marge and I actually have the little, the little Nintendo spaceship from the old Wii game where you had to shoot the little spaceships that come that comes along and and and kind of abducts her. Well, you know, and so basically, you're like, now what? Now that Marge is gone, nobody knows how to do anything. And so that's kind of a just to let people know that they need better systems and that better systems on the back end is gonna help everything on the front end.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. That's awesome. Awesome stuff. Thanks for hanging out today, Karen. You can find Karen at guppyfishweb.com.
Speaker 1:Guppyfishweb.com. She's focused on, nonprofits, churches. Love the setup. Love the process. Love the story, Karen.
Speaker 1:Thanks for hanging out today.
Speaker 2:Thanks. And, you know, and I am Karen, but I'm not that kind of Karen.
Speaker 1:You're that kind of. So much, Karen. Thanks for hanging out today.
Speaker 2:Alright. Thanks.
Speaker 1:That's it for breakdown, your favorite podcast for Gravity Forms and WordPress. Don't forget to tell others about breakdown. Let them know that if they use Gravity Forms and WordPress, this is a must listen show. They can find it at gravityforms.com/breakdown or search for breakdown gravity forms wherever they get their podcasts. We'll see you in the next episode.