Matt: Katie Keith, welcome back to the WP Minute.
Katie: Yeah.
Thanks for having me back.
Good to be here.
Matt: I've donned you my unofficial, official nemesis on Twitter,
for your ability to get so much, interaction, and engagement.
You do a fantastic job.
And I, I sort of joked, a few Months ago, maybe at this point.
I can't remember because time is weird, but You do a fantastic job on Twitter
And I want to talk I want to start with that a lot of folks talk about
like building in public You are very transparent on in public on Twitter
strategy naturally curious in Exploratory do you have a strategy on the Twitter
thing inquiring minds want to know?
Katie: I would say not explicitly.
it's like, I suppose an unconscious strategy might've evolved over time.
Like I only joined, two years and two months ago, so I'm pretty new really.
and, so it took me a while to learn, but you'll notice over time,
my tweets have gotten more real.
And I, I try not, I don't want to be like, One of those guru people.
They, they, they make themselves sound like a guru and they do
things like sentences on Twitter that sound like it came out of a
business advice book or something.
That's not what I want to be.
I'd rather have conversations rather than trying to preach
at people and things like that.
Matt: Yeah, it seems Twitter has actually become a pretty good sounding
board for, for you as a founder.
you know, is, is that a sort of go to place for, you know, engaging with
other founders or are you part of other, like, a lot of, and I know a lot of
founders get into like masterminds and, and monthly calls, quarterly meetups.
what does that look like in your world for like that sort of.
Semi solo founder journey, but, reaching out for advice every now and again.
Katie: Well, my team actually laugh at me because whenever we need to
do some research or we're unsure of something, I say, Oh, I'll tweet
it and that'll give us an answer.
And it always does it's amazing and it's not my only source of advice by any means
I have my team which is about 20 people.
I have a really well established mastermind group We've been together
five years and we talk every day on slack calls every two weeks and we share
our experiences and I get loads out of that But twitter has kind of become an
additional way to get basically free business advice from really great people.
some of the top people in WordPress will happily answer my questions and share.
And I try to do the same when other people ask.
So I find that Twitter opens you up to a kind of wider pool of people that have
lots of relevant experience and I use it in all sorts of ways, not just things like
strategy questions and what do you think of this idea, but also like hiring people.
I've hired quite a lot of people that I got to know on Twitter, whether
it's for freelance work or in house.
team members.
I hate advertising jobs.
It's such a pain and takes forever.
but actually once you've built a network on Twitter, you can just reach
out to people who you respect through Twitter that you know a bit about them.
And that's probably more promising than spending weeks and weeks advertising
Matt: Katie Keith is the co founder of Barn2 Plugins, Barn2.
com, and on that Twitter, ecosystem you recently announced that while
you're heavily focused on WooCommerce, and creating WooCommerce plugins
and solutions, and of course other plugins for WordPress, but you're
sort of shifting gears a bit and introducing Shopify into the mix.
Really excited to talk about that today.
We're gonna, we're gonna save that to the end and keep that audience member,
that listener engaged, through the show.
So, I noticed you haven't.
Set up blue sky yet.
Are you on blue sky?
Are you thinking about, you know, splitting your time
on the other social media?
Katie: right now.
No, it just feels like one is enough to do properly.
I've got a bit put off with Facebook.
I've used Facebook personally for years, but then when WordPress people started
adding me, there was a lot of duplication.
So my Facebook feed became full of Facebook posts that were the same as
things they'd already posted on Twitter.
And I find that really annoying.
I don't want to see the same thing more than once.
So my guess is that blue sky is a lot of that, and people that
I'm already connecting with.
So I don't want to spend time looking through a second
feed with the same content.
I may be wrong there, but I don't feel I have the energy to do justice
to multiple platforms right now.
People also say go on LinkedIn and I really can't be bothered.
Matt: yeah Yeah, i've i've totally pulled out of uh of of facebook
both personally and professionally for for a while now, right?
I I don't really spend any time there unless I need to go like check something
specific but yeah, I think a lot of folks who are Dipping their toes into
the blue sky waters or doing that.
Right.
I'm doing it.
I'm copying and pasting the same thing I'm posting on Twitter and
Katie: Interesting.
No one's told me that, but I suspected.
Matt: Yeah.
And now there, there are times where I do feel more compelled to just
like, write something in blue sky.
Blue sky, really?
You know, I listen.
I think there's a lot of people who have just like everything
else in life, my God, can we stop?
It's been politicized.
like.
Yeah, like everything else and it's just like look I like it because there are no
ads right now there's no algorithm just like constantly throwing like rage content
at me and It is like the essence of what Twitter was Many many years ago where oh
my god third party developers that can access it API access third party apps like
all that is great right now Until I know the eventual closing of API and data and
the ads will come and I'm just like right now I just want to enjoy this product
that is very reminiscent of Twitter that I really enjoyed and Yeah, like I don't
know where it's gonna go, but I am quasi investing in that This is gonna be a,
this is a long rant about like Twitter.
I love Twitter, or X, and I love, I love it because the feed is largely text based
and I can just literally see more on my screen at one time, whether that's on
my mobile phone or my, or my desktop, on my, my monitor, my laptop, whatever.
Whereas you do go to something like A Facebook or a LinkedIn and the posts
just take up, it's like posts, ads, posts, ads, and it's just these big
blocks of content with so much happening on LinkedIn that I too, I'm like,
I need to do better at this thing.
And I don't because I'm exhausted just looking at the feet, whereas I don't
get that with Twitter and blue sky.
Katie: Yeah, true.
Matt: Yeah.
let's talk about your other content marketing strategies at Barn2.
YouTube, live streams, of course you do, the product talk podcast as
well with your, team of podcasters.
but how is the, what's the strategy looking like for 2025 with video and,
and other content related to Barn2?
Katie: Well, our primary content channel is and has always
been SEO content on our blog.
I know everyone keeps saying Google's dead, SEO is dead.
But even if it's replaced by AI, The AIs need something to crawl and
index, which can come from our blog.
So the vast majority of our sales still come from our blog.
So that is our main channel where we put a lot of resources.
But we do have a full time YouTuber, Sam, who's been with us two years now.
So he's putting out regular content on YouTube.
And that's our second biggest source of sales.
It's way behind Google organic, but it is significant.
So that's a good sort of backup, I suppose.
Like, about six months ago, we had a temporary drop in the Google search
results after an algorithm change, which had never happened before.
So that was scary.
And the YouTube actually grew during that period, presumably for the
same algorithm reason that while the blog went down, the YouTube went up.
So it is good to have more than one channel.
Matt: Yeah.
Have you, have you tested the, AI results, like searching your own product
or like your own knowledge base on how to do something, but asking like
chat GPT or Claude and, and analyzing what they're giving you for results.
Katie: I have a bit and it does recommend our products appropriately and also
we've seen sales from AI particularly perplexity AI in our analytics as
well as the source of conversion.
So that's nice to see.
And customers is telling us more and more.
I bought your plugin because chat GPT recommended it.
So that's really good as well.
Matt: Yeah.
Good and scary.
Right.
what on the YouTube channel?
I know Sam, it's, I actually saw him at the last, I don't even know what the
official title is for it, but it's like Anne McCarthy from Automatic does like
a roundup of YouTubers, every month and they, they train us on, you know, stuff
coming out of Automatic and WordPress.
And I saw Sam on there, and he's, just to give some kudos to Sam.
He's really engaging.
He's, you know, he's saying like, Hey, I'm kind of new to the
space and I, and I'm learning.
and it's great to connect with other people.
So he, you know, he's, he's doing his job.
I know it might be review time, so let's, let's give Sam a little bump.
Uh, and it's, and it's great.
What other things are you thinking about other than like the tutorial videos?
I I've seen some like office hours kind of things.
Like what else is working for you for content on, on YouTube?
Katie: Yeah, we started the live streams that you mentioned a year ago and I do
those with Sam and he's a good person to do those with because he, from setting
up the tutorials, he knows our products really well so he's able to answer
questions live as well as they come in.
So we're quite a good team with that.
And we always get loads of people watching live, quite a lot of
questions, both live and pre submitted.
And I was really surprised that they work actually, because we've got 19
premium plugins, which are quite diverse.
They're not all WooCommerce, although they mostly are.
So they don't necessarily have a theme to bring them together.
So I was reluctant to start a live stream because I thought why would anybody
want to watch it all the way through when we have so many different products?
But they do, for some reason.
I also don't know why anybody would subscribe to our
newsletter for the same reason.
It's all these random plugins, but we've got loads and loads of subscribers.
And so People do seem to be interested just in what we're doing generally
and willing to sit through content on plugins they may not yet know about and
hopefully they will then buy plugins that they didn't know they wanted.
Matt: Yeah, I, I think there's going to be, you know, as wonderful as, you
know, or maybe not wonderful is not the right word, but as efficient as AI
is making some things and people are like interested in AI from like the
business perspective in, in like the research, like give me this answer and
explain it more like, you know, better.
Better than like just doing a Google search.
I think there's still going to be this desire to have a human connection.
Right?
recently I switched from, so to give an example, like I'm at the point
where, and we kind of see this in the WordPress space and this is the next
topic that we're going to transition to.
but people want humans, right?
to be served by humans.
They want, I hope anyway, they want to be served by humans.
They want to know who's behind a particular product.
And, you know, we see all this stuff happening with, with WordPress and
we, we kind of know like who owns WordPress, we know who develops it.
And that's largely why we choose WordPress.
But recently I switched from MailChimp to ConvertKit, or now just called Kit because
I was just like, you know, I, into it.
Like, I don't know anybody over there.
I don't care about this megacorp.
They don't care about me.
I want to make conscious purchasing decisions for my business
software that I know I just know who the people are who make it.
Right?
And I think that's one of the long term advantages WordPress has had
being open source and connected.
And maybe that's a thing with like, YouTube, like you maybe scratch
your head sometimes, like why did anybody want to watch this?
I hope that there's consumers out there that are, that want that human connection.
To know who's behind it, and to know like where their dollars are going, you know?
Other than just buying the product.
They just want to know who's behind this, who's making this.
What's their vision for the long term of, of my business that runs their software?
So, I think there's something there.
I don't know if you've Thought about that or how you see that like that human
connection or how important it is to you.
Katie: Yeah, I think that's more and more important the last
couple of years for two reasons.
One is AI, because a lot of content is being produced by AI now, and so by having
real humans, I think, obviously the deep fakes are coming, but for now, people
I think believe, for example, that me and Sam on the livestreams are actually
real people, and Sam on our YouTube.
And we try to add that personal touch to various things like we might have
my name and signature and photo at the end of an email like an, I don't know,
abandoned cart email or something to show this is a company of real people.
And the second reason I think that has become more important is maybe
probably three years ago now, a lot of WordPress companies were acquired by
larger companies and a lot of them I think became less personal as a result.
Some of them kept their original founders who continued advocating for those
companies even after being acquired and others lost that personal faith.
So I think that since Farm 2 is independent, there is a person that is,
reasonably known within the WordPress space, running it, and even talking openly
about how I run it and things like that.
I think that that adds credibility.
And while the people that follow me on say Twitter, aren't necessarily my target
market, because a lot of them are product people rather than potential customers.
There are, for example, agencies and developers following me who do buy
plugins and have said that they're more likely to buy our products as a
result of that personal connection.
Matt: Yeah a lot of this was Had me like why I was critically thinking about it.
I mean, I've been thinking about it for years in fact, I was going back through
my Some of my youtube videos on the Matt report channel, you know where I
talked about You know, this goes back and I'm not like the only person who
has said it, but like go back like five, eight years, 10 years talking about like
why human connection is so important.
But, recently with all this WordPress stuff that's happening, we recently
saw at the time of this recording the injunction come down from, the court and
sort of in favor of, of WP Engine and, Matt Mullenweg wasn't too happy about
it and was very verbose, for lack of a better phrase, in post status, sort of
commenting on it and, and quitting post status, largely, I guess, because of it.
And it really has me You know, had me thinking about, okay,
where am I going with my dollars?
Who am I like partnering my business with?
And I've, I've heard people say like, well, I'm switching
content management systems.
I'm getting out of WordPress entirely.
I'm starting to look for alternatives.
has this impacted you and your team?
I mean, we're going to talk about the Shopify thing.
Maybe that's, this is part of the reason, but has it like
boots on the ground impacted?
Maybe your customers are asking you about it.
what the long term.
Lifespan of WordPress is how has it impacted you this whole scenario?
Katie: Well, no customer has ever mentioned it to me or my support team.
It has never been mentioned in any of the comments on a live stream.
So I feel that we need to acknowledge this.
so internally, I have been worried and we'll talk about this more with
Shopify stuff in a way that I haven't before about potential future risk,
but this risk has not yet materialized.
And, we have, our sales are about the same as they were last year, which isn't great.
But, that actually, we haven't had much growth since a few months
before all this stuff kicked off.
So you can't blame it for that.
We haven't had a drop over Black Friday.
we haven't seen any material, drop in revenue that we can attribute to.
These recent events, but it is a scary time and it feels like things are
less certain than they were before.
Matt: Yeah, that that's for sure.
it's interesting.
Like I, I, I talked to some I don't know, normies?
Is that to tell you?
People who don't follow WordPress, certainly don't watch my show, but they
are, they do use WordPress and only a handful of them kind of knew about it
but largely because they are WP Engine customers so that content is getting
thrown in their face like because it has to be through emails and I guess
dashboard notifications and things like that but they still were unclear.
This scenario too has also like Tried, and I think this is a broader impact across
the community, and I'm interested in your thoughts on it, is, you know, that,
that passion, that, you know, that desire to see, like, to see WordPress continue
to grow, I think that's been like the biggest impact, right, for a lot of us,
is to be like, whoa, this isn't what we thought it was like emotionally, right?
Like, do I need this stress, you know, in my life, for this kind of thing?
Should I be thinking about this?
and maybe it's just me because I cover it also as, as like a media channel.
but like, do I need to, have this stress in my life and do I want to continue to,
you know, fly this flag for WordPress?
And the answer is still.
Yes, for me, except for the stress part of it, but, it's also like, yeah,
man, like this is where year after year taught that this is just a tool.
And, as innovators and as like leaders of our businesses, we have
to keep thinking about like how we can pivot, or at least expand.
so that all the eggs aren't just in the WordPress basket,
whereas, you know, five years ago, you're probably not saying that.
And that's like one of the real unfortunate things.
the fallout of all this stuff.
Mm.
Mm
Katie: that's exactly it.
So as a business, I've always felt really safely diversified with Barn too.
Because we have multiple products, we have products across different niches,
like some WordPress, some WooCommerce.
We have annual renewal, so that if there was ever a sudden drop in new sales for,
say, one product, then We would still have the sales from our other products and our
annual renewals, even on that product.
So I've always felt really, really safe.
We also have other income streams like affiliate revenue for our
blog and that kind of thing.
so I've never felt that my eggs are all in one basket and WordPress has always
felt like such a safe horse to back.
It's been the market leader for so long.
such a great market share and I've never had any doubts about the
whole business being dependent on WordPress until the last two months.
And then I started to think actually.
It feels like there could be a drop in market share and usage of WordPress, which
I've never even worried about before.
And even though I haven't seen it start to happen yet in the numbers, the fact
that the leader of this community can destabilize people's confidence in it
so quickly to that extent is very scary.
And.
While we wouldn't, like, be bankrupt straight away or anything if there
was a 25 percent drop in the number of WordPress sites, obviously
that would have consequences.
And for the first time, I'm worried that something like that could happen if,
these dramas continue to have that impact.
So that is, one of, well, two things that started me to think about Shopify.
The other is that I've always known that there was a risk that our product's
functionality could be merged into either WordPress core or WooCommerce
core, but it's never happened.
And, and that's, and I knew that that was a very lucky thing and it could happen
at any time, but WooCommerce has a new policy, which is currently called more in
core, where they're actively looking to put a lot more functionality into core.
And in a way, I think that's amazing and good because a stronger WooCommerce
means bigger market share, more people using it, which means more sales for us.
But some of our plug in features are in the firing line, some
of our bigger plug ins as well.
So that's another worry.
And while I don't blame WooCommerce for doing these things or planning
to, I need to safeguard my business.
And so having products on additional platforms like Shopify.
feels like a safer strategy.
Matt: Yeah.
I, yeah, I want to get it.
I want to get to the, to the, that WooCommerce more in core.
It sounds like the biggest corporate speak I have ever, Steve Bomber,
developers, development developers, more in core, more in core.
Or do you, does Barn two have any exposure on wordpress.org?
In other words, if WordPress, if Matt just said, I'm taking this wordpress.org
thing down, does that, how does that affect Barn two?
Katie: We do have some free plugins, but that is minor for us.
It wouldn't cause us major problems.
So I haven't been as freaked out as some people about on a personal level about
what happened to ACF, for example, which I realized they have to give back now.
and also threats like the threat made against paid memberships pro when they
tried to remove plugin from wordpress.
org.
Matt Mull and Wegg basically threatened to take it over without their permission,
which didn't happen, but I wasn't personally worried because we are
not dependent on our free plugins in the way that many customers are.
Like I said earlier, our sales typically come from our content
strategies and not from wordpress.
org.
Matt: Yeah.
There was a episode of WP Product Talk where Matt showed up, in an interview
earlier this year, and, I'm still kicking myself and I, and I, Still kicking myself.
I didn't write this blog post because it was like I was watching that episode and
there was just something very Different in his tone in his delivery I mean aside
from the fact he was trying to do it from the woods And he kept having internet,
you know internet connection, which was was which was just like what's happening
here but it was at that moment where I recognized a different a change in him
and I started to like pen an outline.
I was just like the things that are, that will have to happen at automatic.
And I was like playing with titles, like, Oh, if I ran automatic, this is what I
would do, or things I think Matt will be doing with automatic or whatever.
And one of them was ripping the bandaid off.
And, that was one of my subtitles and it was.
Kind of what we're seeing now, but I didn't think it'd be this egregious where
I think he needs to take automatic and WordPress and be like Here's WordPress
by automatic right just as like a product as a company to go this long this far
without any real massive Like, big product shift, like, people don't go to wordpress.
com for hosting, that's not your first, that's not your first spot
when you're thinking WordPress.
you're thinking about other web hosts, and you're not thinking of
WordPress as like, ooh, this amazing product that people must have.
You're thinking like, okay, this is a product I have to learn, it's a
great alternative, it's open source, I gotta kinda learn it and put it
together and host it over here, and it's a good solution, but I'm not
like, It's not a desire for me, right?
It's not this thing I desire.
And I'm thinking to myself, like, in his shoes, there has to be this shift.
And I've always said that he's going to put WordPress front and center by
automatic, powered by Jetpack, powered by com, powered by WP Cloud, and oh, by
the way, down here in the bottom right hand corner, download WordPress for free.
Right?
That's how I kind of like frame it.
We, I mean, we all know how to get free open source WordPress.
You can just go to the github and download it or whatever.
But I think from a packaging positioning thing, he needed
to make this like drastic move.
Now, I don't know if this was the motive behind what he did here, but I thought
there was a rip the bandaid off moment.
And then, focusing on WooCommerce.
This gazillion pound gorilla in the room that largely the average
shop owner, who knows Shopify.
Has no idea about WooCommerce or how to put it together or what it means
and that was just like another focus And I made a comment you you you had
published something on Twitter about the more in core thing and I think I
just came out like bluntly and said like I don't think WooCommerce is
gonna care about our customers, right?
I think WooCommerce cares about, they look at your, like, Barntu's
customers as their customers.
Because I think we're in that rip the band aid off moment with Automatic.
And as many Developer relation people they're gonna throw at us to like smooth
that over I think the time is up for them to be like, oh, let's all work together
No matter what they say on like social or in like real puff piece marketing things
You don't have to get as aggressive on that response as I have but like that's
the way I see it I just I don't see WooCommerce Slowing down and I think
they're just gonna come for everyone's customers because I think that's just
gonna be the, the revenue generator for automatic for the next five years.
Katie: I think that Matt Mullenweg has shown a more aggressive side of himself
lately and a disrespect for the community and the people and companies in it.
And of course, He, ultimately controls WooCommerce.
However, I haven't seen any evidence that he's particularly involved in
it at all on a day to day basis.
And I have seen a lot of evidence of a real desire for collaboration
from the people who are in charge at WooCommerce at the moment.
And so People are very suspicious of WooCommerce at the moment
because it's part of Automattic.
But actually I am not seeing those worries in the actions of
the people in charge right now.
Are you?
Matt: Yeah, well, I, so there was the inter, I think it was
Matt's interview with, on, on the TechCrunch Disrupt, stage.
I think that was the one.
And, I've always been, you know, having talked to Matt a few times and, on this
podcast or on the podcast that I've done, I've always learned to, Listen for what he
doesn't say and what he doesn't mention.
And there, there was a few throwaway lines about WooCommerce when, when the
trademark stuff came up about WP Engine and, and the trademark of, of WordPress
and them sort of, air quotes, abusing it.
And there was just like this throwaway comment with like, All the nuances
around, abusing the WordPress trademark.
And then he kind of like threw away like, and then there's WooCommerce, but that's,
you know, that's totally our trademark.
I'm paraphrasing here, but it was sort of like, you, you might be able to mess with
the nuances of WordPress because it's been in the community for, you know, 20 years
and it's open source and everyone kind of recognizes that, but we own WooCommerce.
Ain't nobody touching this WooCommerce thing and I heard him like kind of
like just full stop on the WooCommerce thing Like you can't even mess
with this and I thought to myself.
Yeah, like that is a brand that That's a that's a pure trade pure trademark
play pure brand play that I don't think anyone can obfuscate who owns that It's
strictly automatic and I think like when he starts pressing the boot down on that
both like pushing WooCommerce to make revenue and Like, this is our brand.
It's just gonna be a whole new world.
On, on how they, how they operate.
And, I don't blame them because they need to run like Shopify
in order to do Shopify things.
I, I, marketing for one, you know,
Katie: No.
Matt: I don't know how he can run.
Certainly.
I don't know how he can run WooCommerce commercially.
I don't know how he's doing WordPress commercially without being as traditional,
aggressive business owner, full stop.
Rip the band aid off.
I don't know how he can do it by smiling and hugging us at WordCamps anymore.
I simply do not see it.
And this is the, this is that next chapter we're in, in my opinion.
Katie: Yeah, I would quite like to see them taking full responsibility for
WooCommerce as a platform because, as you say, it is lacking that central marketing
drive that platforms like Shopify have.
So if they accept they own WooCommerce, they are ultimately responsible.
And yes, it has an ecosystem of plugins like Barn2 that are building for it.
If they took that responsibility, I hope they would drive it to grow more,
which I'm not seeing at the moment and I'm very disappointed that they're not
doing because they are a profit making company and I think that they should
be investing more in the marketing rather than expecting all these smaller
companies to be encouraging people.
Which of course they should do, but I'd like to see that being done centrally.
And in terms of what you say about, everybody knows they own WooCommerce, I
think it's hilarious that they, about the confusion about WP Engine and WordPress
Engine, and is it the same thing?
Because WordPress is so confusing, like WordPress.
org and automatic and WordPress.
com and who owns what?
And that's where the confusion is.
And obviously it's in WooCommerce's favour.
well, not obviously because it's debatable, but I think
it's in WooCommerce's favour that there isn't that confusion.
It is owned by the, I think Automatic is a separate company from WooCommerce,
but it owns the WooCommerce company and that they can therefore have that.
WordPress is very woolly, isn't it?
Matt: Yes, it is.
playground.
So we have the WordPress playground.
We have the WooCommerce playground.
You're going to introduce going into the Shopify playground.
I have a lot of friends who say, Oh God, Shopify isn't any better
when it comes to, you know, playing nice with its competitors.
A friend of the show, Jordan Gall used to run a site.
A product called cart hook and he has some very interesting war stories of
dealing with Shopify and how they kind of pushed him out of their own marketplace
and had no choice but to sort of give up the reins of his, his software,
which was doing really, really good.
and now he's onto a, a new product called Hey Rosie, same concerns.
How are you looking at Shopify going into this, dealing with the same stuff
that we're in the face of dealing with what we're dealing with in WordPress?
Katie: It does have many of the same risks, particularly with regards to
the possibility that they would put functionality into core, or that we would
somehow fall foul of their terms and conditions or something like that, because
we would be selling on a marketplace.
And actually we don't do that with WordPress.
We're not dependent much on dot org.
We're not on the WooCommerce marketplace.
So we do sell independently at the moment, but I see that as being
countered by the greater diversification.
Yes, maybe something will go wrong, but we're aiming to
build multiple Shopify apps.
So if something went wrong with one of them, that wouldn't kill the business.
and also the fact that.
As an ecosystem, it is actually feeling a bit more secure because
of all the uncertainty in WordPress.
So while we're not looking at, reducing our presence in WordPress in any sense
at all, going into, very well, reputable platform like Shopify that, there's
a lot of respect for the leadership.
They seem to have very clear strategy and they are very heavily investing in
promoting that platform is attractive to me, although I do acknowledge those risks.
Matt: Yeah, you finally say, okay, I'm, I'm going to tell the team we're going
to go in the direction of Shopify.
we're gonna have to start developing for Shopify.
what is that like?
How, how does the, what's the team reaction?
Was it a conscious team decision?
and how do you start like, I don't know, divvying up the hours or like
the, the conscious effort to learn how to do it, just like you had to
learn how to make a plug in, how do you do that for the Shopify world?
Katie: It was really my decision.
on my own, I suppose, although I talked to other people about it.
And, then after doing lots of research and thinking and talking in private to other
WordPress people, actually, I had a lot of calls with WordPress people that have
Shopify experience as well, including some quite high profile people with a lot of
experience, and that was really helpful.
And they were very positive about the idea or.
going into Shopify as well.
So that gave me more confidence.
So once I was very sure about the idea, I told the team and I worded it in a careful
way about, Not like this is a disaster.
We need to escape WordPress or anything like that.
but given that there is more uncertainty than there was before I have decided
that the Most secure option for barn 2's future is to start building
products for Shopify As well as continuing with our WordPress products
So I tried to word it in a reassuring way and it seems to go really well.
The team was really positive and excited about it The support team quickly
started having internal discussions about whether they could support Shopify,
and they decided that they would.
And the developers were really positive as well.
a lot of them were very excited about the idea, technically,
of building for Shopify.
Because it would be a new challenge, and they'd heard good things about it.
And some of them had particular skills, like Laravel and React
and things like that, that they thought would be really relevant.
Because I was very unsure at the beginning, should this even be BALM2?
Or should I just set up a completely different brand, hire Shopify
experts, and have totally different people developing and supporting it?
And the more I got into it, the more it did feel like BALM2.
We have an established software company.
We have a support team.
We have a QA person, we have developers with lots of skills.
And the more I got into it, the more it felt like it's no different
really to building another plugin.
my, I consulted with my head of development about the technical.
Options, because with Shopify, you can basically use any programming language or
platform and then it connects to Shopify.
It's, you don't have to use, say Ruby, which Shopify itself is built in.
so my head of development immediately had a proposal.
He'd obviously thought about it before and wrote some really
great technical guidelines.
The other part of your question was about allocating resources and that was a big
decision because I have loads of ideas.
for our existing WordPress plug in.
So, I tried to think what is likely to have the biggest impact on revenue
if I add this extra feature to a plug in or if we have a Shopify app.
So, first of all I thought, okay, I'll put one developer on Shopify.
We've got About five I think in total and then as things got more uncertain
with the more in core stuff I started to think well, this is worrying Maybe I
don't want to add all these features to a product that's likely to go into core
or something similar So then i've now moved two developers to Shopify starting
from the new year, which is quite a big proportion of the team So my first,
Matt: Yeah, the, I, I think it's smart for you to continue with, both
product catalogs being on Barn2.
Because, like you said, established brand, you're a software company
already, and, and, I think there's a particular advantage there because
there are people, it, it, it kind of helps, you expose Shopify people
to WooCommerce and vice versa.
So if a customer ever just says, you know what, it's, I want to go to Shopify now,
at least you have an offering for them.
Right?
You know, and, same thing.
Customer goes, yeah, I want to leave Shopify.
I want to go to this WooCommerce thing.
You have a suite of products there.
And I think that's just a healthy way to build out your ecosystem.
So I think what I'm hearing is, is it as easy, with air quotes, for
you to just take one of your top WooCommerce plugins and just say,
okay, let's replicate this for Shopify.
Do you have that first Shopify product?
idea in mind and if so can you share it or are you still planning it out?
Katie: my starting point for deciding on App Ideas was our plugins,
because I know, I understand the market in WooCommerce for that.
So it felt like a sensible starting point because I wouldn't
be totally starting from scratch.
Technically, it's not that much use because we built them as
plugins, we didn't build them to be used across multiple platforms.
So it wouldn't save that much development time.
But from a research perspective, I started there and it was interesting
because sometimes during the research, I would find these insights through
my WooCommerce knowledge that I felt that the Shopify market was missing.
So, for example, I typed for a particular keyword and the things
that came up weren't what I think people mean by that keyword.
I thought, Hmm.
This is interesting.
Do Shopify people use different terminology or have I
identified a gap in the market?
so, We we have decided on two initial ideas which are related but not identical
to our current plugins Which I haven't announced yet, but it's very recent
decisions, so i'm not going to say but
Matt: sure.
Katie: But that is a useful starting point.
although there's a lot different.
I've discovered some things in Shopify that Very different to how the
WooCommerce extensions approach it.
And, actually yesterday I planned a new feature for one of my WooCommerce
plugins that I'd seen all the Shopify apps in that space have.
And I don't think any WooCommerce ones on the market have that feature.
So I thought, Oh, that's a good opportunity to improve
our WooCommerce business.
So, hopefully everything will benefit.
I
Matt: How, I, I think I have an idea because I, I once again saw one of your
tweets, how are you starting to learn more about Shopify, the community, I
think one of the advantages companies have in the WordPress space, I like
to think so anyway, is that there are a lot of us making WordPress content
and media, your podcast, your YouTube channel, my stuff, countless of our
friends and colleagues that make content.
I think it's easy.
And we've seen this with Omni send, right?
I think it was easy for Omni send to come into the WordPress space
from their Shopify experience and, and look at us and go.
Okay, there's like 12 content creators, a podcast, YouTube channels
that we can sponsor and learn from, and we just, we just need
to dive into, you know, this set.
Is, does that exist in the Shopify world?
Is that how you're learning, how you're trying to get exposure and start to build
up the, the Barn2 brand in that space?
Or is it slightly different or maybe a little bit more, complicated?
Katie: think a lot of people in WordPress seem to have prejudice against Shopify as
an ecosystem because it's not open source.
And I've met people at WordCamps that have said things about how it's
not as friendly and people don't support each other, but actually so
far that hasn't been my experience.
I, for example, I've watched lots of YouTube videos from previous Shopify
conferences, which are just like WordCamps from what I can see, with product
people standing on stage and sharing how they made their app so successful.
And there are newsletters that I've found, actually one of my
team members found, about how to build a successful Shopify app.
There's lots of advice about that on the Shopify app store, for obvious reasons.
They want people to build successful apps.
And, but when I've been tweeting, it's also been interesting because
Shopify people have started to follow me and have reached out several,
maybe two or three, offering advice.
And actually straight after this interview, I've got a call with a Shopify
app seller just to give me advice and share his experiences and people that I
don't know and I'm not in that space yet are being really friendly and reaching out
to help me as well as the WordPress people that know Shopify that are doing the same.
So I found, although it's kind of scary, like learning a whole new platform
when I just know how WooCommerce works and how customers think.
I am finding that the resources are available.
Matt: Yeah, well, I'll definitely set you up with, with Jordan if you don't,
if you're not already friendly with him, you might not get the, the glowing
review of Shopify, but you'll certainly get, you know, a real honest take and,
it obviously been a few years since he's been in the Shopify world, but he can
definitely tell you, maybe what to avoid.
Katie Keith, barn2.
com, WP product talk show, check them out on YouTube as well,
search for Barn2 on YouTube.
Katie Keith, where else can folks go to say thanks?
Katie: Yeah, well, the main place to connect with me individually, as
you've probably gathered from this interview, would be my Twitter,
which is Katie Keith Bantu.
Matt: Awesome stuff everybody else the WP minute comm the WP minute comm
slash subscribe It's the number one way to stay connected and we'll see you
I think in the new year at this point if I did all my scheduling correctly.
All right, everybody I'll see you in the next episode