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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.
54321. Joe Casabona, welcome to Breakdown.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you. Really psyched to be here.
Speaker 1:Try not to have a breakdown as we reminisce over WordPress, but you haven't been in WordPress in quite some times. WordPress proper. Though, maybe you'll surprise me. We'll we'll talk about that. But for folks who don't know who you are, what you've been up to these days since you've quietly backtracked like Homer Simpson to the shrubs from WordPress?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I quite I quite quit WordPress. Right? Didn't do that thing where I wrote a blog post about leaving WordPress because who cares? But, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I have been really focusing on helping people build systems and automations to support their solopreneur business. And so, into the podcasting space and then kinda took a couple of steps out from that because people like, if you can build automations for my podcast, can you help me build these other automations? And I'm like, I I sure can. And so, I'm really focusing in on that niche of like busy solopreneur parents who don't wanna be chained to their desk.
Speaker 1:Long time coming, right, to well, this is me speaking. I'll I'll draw the outline. You you could fill it in or tell me I'm wrong. There's a long time coming. Right?
Speaker 1:Personally, I I mean, I've known you for years. We used to been we used to be partners on a lot of different, like, content endeavors. But do you feel like it's a long time coming to really, like, hone in on that that brand messaging for yourself and your business? Long time coming and it and it kind of probably feels good to, like, I can finally have my elevator pitch nailed down.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I think a lot of good came from being in the WordPress space. But I think there's, like, two big pieces of baggage that I personally carried from it. And one is, like, pricing.
Speaker 2:Just, like, I think everything is undervalued in the WordPress space and I think that comes from the top. But the other is just like this mindset that, well, I can make a website for anybody or anything with WordPress. So, like, why would I limit myself? And and after I left the WordPress space and I didn't have the connections and the background and the pedigree, I realized, oh, people actually need to know what to recommend me for. And if I don't have that elevator pitch, that focus, people are gonna have no idea.
Speaker 2:And and it happened to me time and time again. People were like, you do a lot. What like, if what should I recommend you for? And I'm like, that's a great question. So I'm yes.
Speaker 2:I'm really glad to finally have have an actual answer to that.
Speaker 1:I was listening to your podcast the other day. That's why I I text you, and I said, hey. Let's come on the the breakdown podcast and talk about this. Your podcast, Streamlined Solopreneur, you can find it at streamlined.fm, streamlined.fm. I'll link that, of course, in the show notes.
Speaker 1:You were, you know, giving the the different pieces of software that you use for automation, and Gravity Forms is one of them. So I'm like, ah, Joe, let's, you know, let's talk about that. But hold it for a second. Let's hold that thought for a second. I want you to try to I want your take on automation versus AI.
Speaker 1:And are we move like, automation, you know, first thing that comes to my head, Zapier, maybe doing some things with Notion or or what have you. Like, these are things that say, from this point, go to the next point. And then if this, then go there. If that, go in this direction. And then if there's a start and an end, maybe, like, if you're building an email sequence, which was which I was just doing in ConvertKit before we hopped on the call, you're building, this path.
Speaker 1:And then there's AI now where I feel like it's a blank canvas. You just say, hey. Do this thing for me. And however you get there, whatever. I don't care.
Speaker 1:Just, like, go and do it and come back, but it's not to the same degree as Zapier. If you can kinda see where I'm going with this question, how do you look at automation versus AI? Do these paths eventually merge as AI gets better, or how do you see these two, like, paths running alongside of each other?
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is a a really good question because I do think people kinda conflate them. And, actually, someone pitched for my podcast where they absolutely conflated them. And I think we're moving in that direction. Right?
Speaker 2:The notion of, like, an AI agent is is that exactly. Right? It's like, hey, I'm going to Disney World in May, which is accurate. I leave next week. But sorry, I just time stamped this.
Speaker 2:Book my flights. These are my kids this is my kids' information. Book the hotel. Create an itinerary for us. And in some future world, an AI agent will be able to do that.
Speaker 2:The way I look at it today, because marketing departments have taken a hold of AI agents that are using them incorrectly, like Circle's AI agent is not an AI agent. Right? But the way I look at it today is the difference between me telling my kids to clean the sunroom and then me guiding my kids to actually clean it properly. Right? If I just say clean the sunroom and I walk away and I go downstairs or I, you know, do go outside and do yard work, I come back and maybe the floor will be clean, but everything will be on the couches.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, you didn't you just took stuff off the floor. Right? Versus I say, okay, pick up these toys and put them in that toy bin, you know, take this trash, put it in the trash. Telling AI to do something right now is is kind of the clean the sunroom and automation is the, here's exactly how you clean the sunroom. Now, do it for me.
Speaker 2:Right? I think I think that's the main difference.
Speaker 1:Must be a Northeast thing because I too have a sunroom where I tell my kid the same exact thing. Like, get in there and clean it up. Although we since, like, redid our basement, so now, like, I try to keep all the toys down there, but now that the weather's getting better, they're starting from the sunroom and going outside in and out. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just going everywhere. Yeah. I mean, all houses are close together here in the Northeast, so we need an additional room to make up for the lack of of actual space we have.
Speaker 1:Right? And, like, you know, the weather. Right? So you're just like, yeah. It's not warm enough to be outside, but it's warmer to be in here, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:You mentioned a bunch of, of tools and stuff in in the episode, that I was listening to. As I mentioned, Gravity Forms, Notion being, another. What's your automation tool of choice? Is it Zapier or is it something else? Like, where do you spend most of your time, especially when you're consulting clients to, like, help set up automation?
Speaker 2:Yeah. This week, it's I'm living in Zapier and I think it's that way for a couple of reasons. Right? If you would ask me this question a year ago, I would have been like, make.com. It's cheaper.
Speaker 2:It does everything blah blah blah blah. Like, now that I've started making more automations for clients and like trying to hand them the reins to empower them to do it a little bit more, Make is like, there's a reason Make is cheaper and it's that it requires a little bit more know how. Right? Because like Zapier charges you per executed task and there might be like 10 things that that task does, but Zapier is charging you for the task versus Make is charging you for operations and who knows how many operations are are in an automation. Like, it's it's impossible to know.
Speaker 2:Right? And so you can, like, really bang up against that limit quickly if you don't know what you're doing. And, like, the Google authentication stuff in make is not as as clean. So the shortest answer to your question is Zapier has become my has once again become my automation tool of choice. It's just it has more integrations.
Speaker 2:I think it's a bit more user friendly. And yes, it's pricier, but there's a reason it's pricier. I never have to worry about creating a developer console API key to connect my Gmail to Zapier.
Speaker 1:True or false? Is Zapier the Elementor of automation, or is that true or false or unfair?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Oh, that's a great question. Well, it's certainly not the divvy of automation. Oh, no. That's not mean.
Speaker 2:That was an unnecessary No, it's time impressive.
Speaker 1:Quite some time Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think I think that's probably reasonable. Right? I think it's especially because its AI thing is actually good. Like like, I I have a client.
Speaker 2:We had an hour long call on what automations I would build for her. I took no notes. I just fed the transcript into chat GPT and was like, what automations did I say I would build? It came up with a spec for the whole thing, and I'm like, great. I showed it to her.
Speaker 2:She's like, perfect. And then, I took parts of that spec and I just fed it into Zapier, and it built the zap more or less for me. Like, its its own built in AI is fantastic. So, like, I think it is really, really well done.
Speaker 1:You know, I tried not to make this a Zapier thing, but Zapier is one of Gravity Forms most popular add ons, which you might even be talking about in a moment. But I I was trying to the other day I forget what Zapier calls it. I think it's called a loop. And I was trying to take ingest a blog post, right, via RSS, summarize it via chat GPT, bring that or not summarize it, bring the content in, from, bring the content in from RSS. I think maybe find, like, sentiment or context via ChatGPT to, like, have, like, three or four different takes.
Speaker 1:And based on those three to four different takes, loop and create, Twitter post, Blue Sky post, LinkedIn post, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it with the loop. And I was really, really frustrated with Zapier. But maybe that's I maybe I've broke the system. I can't go can't go that far.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, I just also recently discovered loop. Look, I maybe it's new, maybe I just haven't had a need for it though, like, I kinda find that part hard to believe that in all of my time, wouldn't have needed it. But that definitely feels like a it's that's a tough feature, I think, because even in testing, it'll it'll only take like the first iteration of the loop. And so, I I got it working successfully with one of my my automations where I basically word vomit, I send the transcript to chat GBT, I say, take all the things I said I had to do, make it a comma separated list and then I use the loop to iterate through that and send each individual task to Todoist.
Speaker 2:And, that worked well. It took a little cajoling because I didn't really understand how the loop worked at first. But I think if you're looking for different posts, like the way that I do that is I have one really long prompt in chat GPT and I say, okay, take this transcript, make it a LinkedIn post. Here's best practice for LinkedIn post. Here's best practice for Twitter, whatever.
Speaker 2:And then I say, give me back all the text and then I just throw that into a Notion document with the for me, it's for short form video. So with the link to short form video. You know,
Speaker 1:and and this is, you know, all of this, it sounds complex. It is. Right? You have to kinda know this stuff. That's why you hire somebody like Joe to, like, do the automation for you, at least consult with you to figure out the different ins and outs.
Speaker 1:And half of my brain is like, man, I can't wait for AI to just do all this, not to put you out of a job, Joe. But you think to yourself, like, can I just talk to a bot and it just does this? And then half my brain's like, oh, yeah. This is gonna be awesome when it does that. And the other half of my brain is like, it ain't never gonna get there.
Speaker 1:Like, this is so complex. And there are so many different things. Like, do we is this AI thing really gonna get there? I don't know. Like, there's so much competition.
Speaker 1:There's there's Zapier itself, obviously, Chad GBT, Claude, DeepSeek. There's all these places that you can go to, and I don't know. I feel like they're all kinda, like, jockeying for their position, and it'll just be, like, either a mass acquisition by one AI company or I I just don't see this one place solves all things happening anytime soon anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, you think about because like, one of the most frustrating things, one of the places where people stop automating in the beginning is, like, you can't just tell Zapier, do these things. Here's my username and password. Right? Especially as two factor authentication or biometric authentication gets more sophisticated, we would still need to credential any of these bot like, any of these AI bots.
Speaker 2:Right? And so, like, that's already a huge hurdle. Right? Unless they partner with companies that probably are happy to have a bunch of proprietary user data. Right?
Speaker 2:So Google Gemini is the I wouldn't I I don't think it's the laggard because there's our favorite Apple companion. I don't wanna activate anybody's right now, but that's absolutely the worst one. It's like easily the dumbest one. But, like, I haven't been super impressed by Gemini, but Gemini could be a good candidate for this, right? Because if you are in the or like Apple's Apple Intelligence could be could be, right?
Speaker 2:Maybe maybe ChatGPT in their contract with Apple is like, hey, you know how yours sucks and our does ours doesn't? Just like give us system level access. We'll play in your sandbox or whatever, but like, imagine if somebody could just be like, well, like, the demo they had at WWDC last year. Right? Oh, my mom's what time is my mom's flight coming in?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So, like, at this point, Siri's never gonna know that. Oh, god. Sorry. We're gonna have to beat that, I guess.
Speaker 1:You know, I I want you know, the what's funny, and you know, we're halfway through the episode. We are gonna talk about gravity forms and automation in a second, but let's just pontificate a little bit more on this AI thing because I want I actually want Apple to win in some of these regards because I look at it as alright. You always you're always gonna have your, let's say, iPhone in your pocket. Right? And you would imagine, like, god, these things are so powerful now.
Speaker 1:I was just reading an article the other day that maybe the new iPhone 17 might have 16 gigs of RAM in it, and you're just like, man, this thing is, like, laptop level powerful now. And I would love to have a situation where, okay, you got your phone on you, you got your ear pod in, Never mind, like, Apple glasses. Like, if it ever came down to, like, consumer level readiness, but you have your ear ear pod in and I don't know. Somebody comes to your house and it's like, hey. I need a new roof.
Speaker 1:And the guy's like, yeah. You definitely need a new roof because I see this, this, and this over here. That's gonna be $50,000. And as he's saying that to you, your AI is taking in that information and feeding it into your like a producer in your ear going, he's lying. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. It's not gonna cost $50,000. I just searched, you know, three other quotes from places around. They said it's gonna be $25,000, and the things he's pointing out is not correct. And this is all happening as instant as you're asking for results from ChatGPT now, except it's active, and it's, like, helping you navigate the world to a degree.
Speaker 1:And and that's what I'm actually excited for, this, like, level playing field of of knowledge and information where, you know, society for thousands of years have capitalized on the lack of information from people, from car sales to, you know, contract negotiations.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Oh, man. Let's I took my van our speaker, like, of our speakers when and we went yesterday and dropped it off at the dealer's service shop and they're like, oh, are you here for the six month thing? That's $330. And I'm like, I thought this was covered.
Speaker 2:Like, and then they're like, oh, well, the diagnostic is this and the oil is this. And I just like walked out feeling like I got screwed because my speaker went out. Now, it's covered under warranty, so they were just, like it was, like, kinda CYA stuff, but, like, I hated that. Like, I just wanna hear music evenly in my car. I don't wanna feel like
Speaker 1:I'm getting raked over the coals for it. To nobody's surprise, two middle aged men bearded podcast who both drive minivans. Right? And we both Joe and I both drive minivan. You still have the minivan.
Speaker 2:Right? Heck yeah. I'm not I'm I love that thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I I brought it to the dealership the other day too. Same thing, oil change and and and tires, although they had a great deal on tires. So that's why I brought it in, and they were and I was having a problem with the DVD player. And, you know, we only watch the DVD players when we go on long trips.
Speaker 1:And they're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Something wrong with it. It's a it's a $1,500 to replace it. And I was just like, yeah, a quick search on eBay.
Speaker 1:I found the DVD unit because they're like, oh, yeah. The unit is shorting. It's $1,500 just for the unit. I'm like, yeah. EBay says it's a 150.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're like 10 x ing that price on me. Like, no way. You know? Not gonna fool this guy.
Speaker 2:Unbelievable. Yeah. That's what that's our next podcast, middle aged guy talk. Yeah. Northeast middle aged.
Speaker 2:Right? Because we gotta we gotta get our accent. Unbelievable. This guy tried to screw me over the van.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You know who you're talking to. You're talking to a podcaster with minivan. Right?
Speaker 1:You think you're fool me. Alright. Let's get into let's talk about some of this Gravity Forms stuff. Again, paraphrasing you following the lines. It sounded like on your podcast that all things, at least from user input, people coming to your site either to to book a consult with you or to book a podcast with you.
Speaker 1:It starts with Gravity Forms, and then it branches out. Can you kinda illustrate how your topography of automation exists starting with Gravity Forms and then what happens next?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's take the I guess, the maybe more interesting one. They're both pretty interesting, but let's do the podcast guest intake form. Right? So there are actually two versions of that because you can pass a form form values via the URL.
Speaker 2:So I have like this hidden field that indicates if they've been invited or if they are just kind of like cold pitching me and it'll show them through conditional logic different fields. Right? If I know you, I'm not gonna make you fill out though like who who are you and why are you here. I also generally like to have if I'm inviting somebody, have I like to have most of that form filled out. So, I usually use like a short link to make sure most of the form is filled out.
Speaker 2:And then, when they hit submit, again, based on some conditional logic, they'll either get redirected to my cal.com form. I have passed all of the data via the URL, so the cal.com form is also filled in and they just need to pick their time. If they are applying, they get a thank you page and my my so this is actually in make.com. I have it in both places, but the active one is in make.com right now. So and then it gets sent to make.com.
Speaker 2:Make.com will throw them into Notion for for me to evaluate. If they are booking through Calendly, they've been so if I accept their application, they get sent again a fully filled out cal.com invite and no matter if they came via gravity forms or via the notion email that says like, hey, you made it. That all gets filled out and again, put back into notion in my into my upcoming episodes sheet. So, I'm really heavily using conditional logic to create a streamlined experience for for people who are pitching to be on my show. And I really love that.
Speaker 2:And then, same thing goes for my coaching form, right? It's that is people are usually gonna see the same form, maybe based on some of their answers, I'll show them different things. But then, on the back end when they hit submit, I'm going to redirect them to one of two pages based on their answers. Right? If I don't think they're ready for my coaching, I send them to a page with a video that basically says, hey, thanks so much for applying.
Speaker 2:I think based on your answers, these free resources will be great. If you really, really do still want to pay me, you know, I I start here, book a call. Right? And then if if they I think they do fit the bill based on what they filled out, I will send them to my book a discovery call page.
Speaker 1:I want I want to go back to the start of the contact form. So you use explain how you're passing the URL stuff. Is that were you saying, like, if they go directly to your contact form, it's probably like a bot or an automated service that goes directly there. And based off of conditional logic, you are changing the the way that the the form responds when you're passing those URLs. Can you redo that one for me?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So well, I won't say the exact URL parameter, but let's let's say I have hidden field on the form. Yeah. That is, you know, that's called
Speaker 1:I gotcha.
Speaker 2:You know, I asked them to come on the show. And if that is set to true, then then I use that as the conditional logic point. So
Speaker 1:That's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's I think it's it's really helpful because like, I I don't something that Jay Clough said like three years ago or two years ago maybe like really stuck with me and it's that if I'm inviting someone to be on my show, I don't wanna give them a bunch of homework. And I'm like, yeah, they still need to use my booking link because that's gonna be the easiest path. But if I can have the form mostly filled out for them and I don't have to ask them for a bunch of socials that I I found in research anyway, then that's gonna make their lives a lot easier. And maybe they're just uploading their preferred headshot and then booking a time.
Speaker 1:And if they're a brand new, you know, person and they're knocking on your door and you have them fill out this form, what kind of questions are you asking that actually helps your production of the episode? I heard you say socials. I'm sure that's one of them, but do you ask them for no. I've I've been guests on podcasts, obviously, a lot, and it's like, hey. Upload your your bio.
Speaker 1:Upload a headshot. Upload all the links to all your your things, and and you're doing a lot of, like, upfront. Is that all the stuff you're collecting to make your life a little bit easier on the back end of of that interview?
Speaker 2:No. So I'm I'm asking them, like, a couple of pointed questions. Right? And right now but okay. Because first of all, when my show was called How I Built It, as you can imagine, people thought that I was Guy Raz.
Speaker 2:Right? And I'm just gonna say, I made it super clear on the application form that I wasn't. And my show was out three months before that show. But, you know, I finally just decided, oh, you know, NPR, you can have the name. I'll give it up out of the goodness of my heart.
Speaker 2:So but now, it's like I still get a bunch of founder stories and I'm like not even remotely interested in those. Right? So I used to ask like how can you help solopreneur parents? But now, I wanna do more of these like case study style episodes where it's like, Matt, if you've built an automation that is saving you time or you've built a system, I want I wanna talk specifically about that. So now, it's like, what's the topic you'd like to discuss?
Speaker 2:Tell me more about how you save time by implementing this process system or automation and then what made you want to reach out. This used to be what episode made you want to reach out and I've decided that I'm not going to like I was just getting, oh, your whatever second to last episode was because picking the latest episode is like a a tell. And then, it's just an AI summary. So, that was just a useless answer, right? So, those are the main ones and then like the short bio.
Speaker 2:So, when they are when I ask them to come on the show, I hide the what made you wanna reach out and how will this topic help my listeners sort of thing, right? Because ideally, their name, email and topic are already filled out, Right? I've pitched them a topic and I I wanna make sure that sticks. And so then I'm just asking them for their bio and their headshot, like their preferred bio and headshot, right, because I can make something up and find their Twitter profile or whatever. LinkedIn, I can't use Twitter anymore.
Speaker 2:I'm, like, off of it completely, and I don't even know my username and password, so I can't log into that anymore. So so they're LinkedIn headshot.
Speaker 1:What connects the Gravity Form to Notion? So that's the first question. What connects your Gravity Form to Notion? How do you send that data there? And then the second half of that question is, why do you pick Notion as your central hub to review?
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking most people, to give you a second to think about that, think most people listening to this go, oh, well, I've got Gravity Forms, and I too have a podcast, and people fill out the form, and I get the email, and I just star the email, and I follow-up. Or I'm using the Gravity Forms entries page, and I'm looking at my podcast interview form and I'm saying, okay, you know, Joe emailed me. Let me just click on this, copy paste his email and and reply to him. You know, what connects Gravity Forms to Notion, and then why do you make Notion that central hub?
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is a great question. Right? And I think you you personally probably know this, but there was a time where WordPress was a hammer and everything is was a nail. So, it's like, oh, you can use WordPress for your CRM and your email marketing and your accounting.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, why would I want to do my accounting in WordPress when there are professional accounting firms with software that does this. Right? Like, my accountant would never have no offense to the fine people who wrote the software I'm thinking of, but like, not for me. Right? And so, part of it was like WordPress is my website and my forms are there and Notion is my project manager.
Speaker 2:And Notion is my project manager because it is used by more people and it's probably more user friendly than what I was using which was Airtable and my VA has access to it. And so, that that's the main reason. And there were some growing pains because when I moved from Airtable to Notion, Notion didn't have any automation capabilities. And then when they rolled out automation capabilities, they may may as well have not. Right?
Speaker 2:Like it was just completely useless. But since I think October, they've really improved those and and now you can send email too. So like, really happy with that. And again, like Notion is just like quick click of a button or move something from Kanban to in my Kanban board from applied to rejected or applied accepted. So that's why I use Notion.
Speaker 2:Like, there's like some team aspects to it and I think it's just more flexible as a project management system. And I don't have to worry about maintaining code or hoping some big company doesn't rename it or block it or ban hammer it for having two letters close together. So and then to answer your first question, make.com connects Gravity Forms to Notion. I am really open to I'm all about the fewest points of failure as possible. And so, like, if you tell me right now that there's a Gravity Forms Notion integration, I will replace that.
Speaker 2:Right? Because fewer points of failure is really important to me.
Speaker 1:Well, there is. It's just not an official one. It's a bit from our certified developers at gravitywhiz.com.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice.
Speaker 1:They make Gravity Connect Notion. They have a suite of what they call connect tools. Notion being one of them, Airtable being another, and of and and OpenAI API access if you wanted to, like, directly connect Gravity Forms to to ChatGPT.
Speaker 2:That's not Zach. Right? That's
Speaker 1:Zach is Gravity Kit, that's Dave. Right. Dave is Gravity Wiz.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. Cool.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 2:Cool. Oh, yeah. And Clay. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yep. Nice. What happens when the what after you hit yes to a guest in Notion, where where does the automation bring you running the business? Right?
Speaker 1:Like, running I you know, running the podcast, running the business. You say yes, then what happens after that? Do you have, like, that data move from Notion to some other place? And really where I I wanna end not end the conversation, but end this, like, journey is how do you resurface this information later on to say, hey, guest. Podcast is done.
Speaker 1:It's at this URL. Please, for the love of God, promote this. Promote our time together. Because I think that's such an important thing. And this is something that I this is a bit of a greedy question too.
Speaker 1:It's something that I lack in is always just like, okay. Episode's out, and I just DM the person. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I forget to even DM the guest. You know, and I'm like, episode's out.
Speaker 1:You know, please promote it. So how are you, like where does that data go after you hit yes? And do you eventually end it where you kinda, like, resurface all of this information to help them share your episode with their audience?
Speaker 2:So to be completely honest, my guests are better at promoting my episodes on social media than I am. I do notify them when an episode is live. And so this is I used to have a custom built plugin for my WordPress site that did a lot of stuff under the hood for the podcast. And then when I moved out of the WordPress space, I thought, if I'm gonna be helping people, I don't want them to have to rely on code that I wrote and barely wanna support. I also, like, changed hosts a lot.
Speaker 2:I moved from Libsyn to Castos to Transistor and each time I had to update the plugin. Right? And like the transcripts were like a separate custom post type instead of being like an embedded thing on the page. And so there was just like a lot. And so, the sole vestige, is that right?
Speaker 2:Vestige? Vestige of that plugin is the when an episode post is published, email the guest with the with the URL. And that requires my VA to put in my guest's email address and their name in custom fields in ACF so that WordPress has that information. As I'm talking through it right now and as as of like two months ago when Notion got the ability to send emails, I'm realizing that I don't actually need that part anymore, right? Because I click yes, they fill out the form and they fill out the Calendly form or I'm sorry, the cal.com form.
Speaker 2:That information gets sent back to my episode planner in Notion where I have all of that information. And then, I also have a go live date because that's important for my VA and I can just have an automation where on this date, send the email with a link because the link is just streamlined dot f m slash episode number. So like that like, I actually don't even need that part anymore. But to answer your question, yes. I automatically send an email when the episode goes live saying, hey, this episode is live.
Speaker 2:Here's the link. I would love if you shared it. That's all I do because I'm not creating assets for myself. And like and maybe if I made their job easier, they'd share it but like, I I try to share episodes that I'm on because I know how hard it is and I don't always get to it or like, the guest will use a ridiculous like AI version of me and I'm just not gonna share that. I hate that.
Speaker 2:Don't people who are listening who are podcasters, don't modify your guests headshot via AI. That's obnoxious. Like, we've provided you a headshot and just use that one. Just use that one.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen anybody modify. You get you're getting a lot of that recently where people are
Speaker 2:I've gotten it twice. The last time the host was like, I was just trying something. And I'm like, okay. The first time though, like, guy show was AI based. And so, like, expected, but, like, I'll it made me look like garbage.
Speaker 2:Like, I didn't look good at all. Yeah. And and then I looked at, like, the other guests and, like, he definitely, like, de aged women and, like, you know, like, made guys look buffer. And I'm just like, oh. I said, hey, man.
Speaker 2:I'm can you use the headshot I sent?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna share this with this image. And he never got back to me.
Speaker 1:Well, Joe, it's been a while since you've been developing sites, in WordPress and, maybe using Gravity Forms for other things. But, do you have any do you have, like, a wish list that you that you would really like to see Gravity Forms do aside from maybe, like, native Notion integration? Is there anything where you're like, man, I used to use Gravity Forms all the time for x y z, or I would really love to have Gravity Forms do this for, my podcasting and automation life these days? Do you have anything on that front?
Speaker 2:To be honest, I'm probably using Gravity Forms more now than I'm not developing because I don't I don't wanna write. I just did a I just wrapped a project where chat GPT wrote a thousand lines of custom code for me, and it all worked. I I like I'm floored that it all just worked flawlessly. But, yeah, as far I mean, as far as Gravity Forms, like, this is one of the few pieces of saw and I'm not just you know, I wouldn't just blow smoke for you. This is one of the few pieces of software where I don't feel like there's terrible friction.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, I use software and I'm like, this is obviously half baked, but like, I can't remember the last time I was trying to do something in Gravity Forms and couldn't. So yay, Gravity Forms. Nice work.
Speaker 1:I I'm not gonna ask another question. We're gonna end on that. Positive note is Joe Casabona. You can find him at casabona.org, streamlined.fm. He's the biggest New York Mets fan around.
Speaker 1:Wow. Defamation. Is there any other links you want people to visit to find out more about you and say thanks?
Speaker 2:What did you you said Casabona. So I've talked a lot about automation. So if you wanna get, like, my 40 free automation templates, you can go to casabona.org/automation. And to make the record clear for both me and our mutual friend Jason Resnick, who would take issue with this, I love the Yankees. Res loves the Mets.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Gotcha. Thanks for listening everybody. We'll see you in the next episode. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1:If you could do one more thing for me today, share this episode on social media, your favorite Facebook group or Discord channel. Spread the word about this podcast. It really helps. If you haven't added Breakdown to your favorite podcast app, point your browser to gravityforms.com/breakdown and click the icon of your app to add us and listen to us every two weeks. Okay.
Speaker 1:We'll see you in the next episode.