WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:01:14.572 --> 00:01:15.753 matt: Hey, Scott, welcome to the program. 00:01:15.753 --> 00:01:16.253 scott: Pleasure to be here. 00:01:16.533 --> 00:01:17.103 Thanks so much. 00:01:17.233 --> 00:01:19.293 matt: Big Scoots, proud foundation. 00:01:19.293 --> 00:01:20.593 Well, I'm saying you're proud. 00:01:21.023 --> 00:01:22.163 I'm putting words in your mouth. 00:01:22.513 --> 00:01:25.453 You're proud foundation plus sponsor, of the WP minute. 00:01:25.523 --> 00:01:28.823 We can't thank you enough for helping, support independent WordPress news and 00:01:28.823 --> 00:01:30.843 journalism, in our WordPress space. 00:01:31.173 --> 00:01:34.603 we're happy to have your logo across all the work that we do. 00:01:34.643 --> 00:01:36.403 So again, big thanks. 00:01:36.748 --> 00:01:40.818 Two big scoots for supporting, supporting us here at the WP minute today. 00:01:40.853 --> 00:01:41.783 scott: rolls right off the tongue. 00:01:41.903 --> 00:01:43.083 Yeah, yeah, yeah, no way. 00:01:43.083 --> 00:01:43.823 I mean, thanks. 00:01:43.993 --> 00:01:45.423 Thanks for allowing us to be part of it. 00:01:45.423 --> 00:01:46.023 It's a pleasure. 00:01:46.618 --> 00:01:52.018 matt: Scott, we, we just met minutes ago, Tim introduced us and dipped off the call. 00:01:52.018 --> 00:01:54.778 So we wouldn't have a third channel in the podcast at it. 00:01:55.308 --> 00:02:01.728 obviously I've had heard of big scoots from people on, on Twitter before, 00:02:01.728 --> 00:02:06.278 maybe I've even seen it, on LinkedIn didn't really know about big scoots 00:02:06.328 --> 00:02:09.958 in the WordPress world, but my God, you guys are really making a mark. 00:02:10.438 --> 00:02:14.948 in that WordPress managed hosting space, a very competitive space. 00:02:15.178 --> 00:02:17.678 I was looking at your LinkedIn profile. 00:02:18.448 --> 00:02:22.378 And big scoots, big scoots started 14 years ago. 00:02:22.588 --> 00:02:25.008 You went from researcher to CEO. 00:02:25.258 --> 00:02:30.048 I didn't see any other like tech startup space in the middle there. 00:02:30.058 --> 00:02:32.188 How did you make the leap from researcher? 00:02:32.188 --> 00:02:33.668 And what, what was that role? 00:02:33.668 --> 00:02:35.358 And how did, how did you get into hosting? 00:02:36.343 --> 00:02:40.143 scott: Yeah, well, it was more of a CEO to researcher continued 00:02:40.143 --> 00:02:42.343 forward with the CEO, bit. 00:02:42.383 --> 00:02:45.863 lots of in betweens there, but that's the, that's the timeline. 00:02:46.243 --> 00:02:50.313 yeah, I was, so we found a big scoots in college, in 2010. 00:02:50.313 --> 00:02:51.993 It feels like many moons ago. 00:02:52.283 --> 00:02:54.943 my business partner and I were eager to work together. 00:02:55.083 --> 00:02:56.973 sort of leverage what we knew and knew. 00:02:56.973 --> 00:03:00.363 Well, he was an infrastructure, and system admin guru. 00:03:00.363 --> 00:03:03.203 So he had his hands on the actual physical infrastructure that we 00:03:03.203 --> 00:03:05.223 still to we still do to this day. 00:03:05.233 --> 00:03:08.303 That's kind of one of the interesting bits about how we differentiate 00:03:08.303 --> 00:03:09.413 from others in the market. 00:03:09.793 --> 00:03:11.393 Being that we own and operate everything. 00:03:11.413 --> 00:03:14.463 but sort of just started from a point of, okay, you know, what can we do? 00:03:14.483 --> 00:03:18.393 That's interesting in a interesting space that we really enjoy, you know, WordPress. 00:03:18.913 --> 00:03:21.283 It's kind of funny at the time it wasn't really established 00:03:21.283 --> 00:03:23.393 as we, so I mean, certainly not established as we know it today. 00:03:23.593 --> 00:03:28.243 but hosting, hosting was, was sort of that, interesting pie in the sky where 00:03:28.283 --> 00:03:31.573 we thought to ourselves, look, A lot of people don't do this very well. 00:03:31.583 --> 00:03:32.743 How can we do this better? 00:03:33.053 --> 00:03:35.723 We're going to build something predicated entirely on service. 00:03:35.773 --> 00:03:38.343 you know, I've always been in tech generally, you know, just enjoyed it. 00:03:38.353 --> 00:03:40.593 Sort of just tech aficionado, I guess you could say. 00:03:40.833 --> 00:03:45.413 so the idea of bridge, you know, moving into tech, leveraging Justin's skill set. 00:03:45.533 --> 00:03:48.653 we really kind of came together, you know, with me sort of on the sales and, 00:03:48.653 --> 00:03:51.873 and business side of things, wearing a lot of hats at the time, you know, taxes, 00:03:51.873 --> 00:03:54.143 accountants, you know, the rest of it that you have to do as an entrepreneur. 00:03:54.453 --> 00:03:58.373 but he laser focused, you know, in his basement with the, you know, you know, 00:03:58.423 --> 00:04:01.773 the, the drapes drawn and, and what have you just kind of focused on what he did. 00:04:02.093 --> 00:04:05.213 And, we've just, we've just iterated on service a hundred times over. 00:04:05.243 --> 00:04:07.603 you know, you know, a hundred times a week, I guess you could say up 00:04:07.603 --> 00:04:11.123 until today, you know, 14 and a bit years later, you know, we have a, 00:04:11.133 --> 00:04:15.553 an industry leading industry service leading platform, for managed WordPress. 00:04:15.613 --> 00:04:19.543 so, you know, we came from a place, of just being, Interested and 00:04:19.543 --> 00:04:21.113 excited about offering good service. 00:04:21.113 --> 00:04:24.983 And, and we sort of pivoted all our ways through up, up, up until WordPress. 00:04:24.983 --> 00:04:26.083 And I mean, we love where we are. 00:04:26.353 --> 00:04:29.663 the researcher bit, that was kind of an interesting personal, situation. 00:04:29.663 --> 00:04:33.133 I was in college for, it was pre med at the time, but biomedical engineering 00:04:33.133 --> 00:04:34.673 was the, degree path that I was on. 00:04:35.013 --> 00:04:39.543 I did finish it, perhaps pretty unrelated to what I do on a day to day basis today. 00:04:39.843 --> 00:04:40.573 but it was exciting. 00:04:40.583 --> 00:04:44.543 So med school was my original, inspiration, for sort of, 00:04:44.583 --> 00:04:46.073 digging in and, and going hard. 00:04:46.443 --> 00:04:49.813 But, you know, WordPress has been, has been exciting really ever since. 00:04:49.823 --> 00:04:50.203 So. 00:04:50.253 --> 00:04:55.203 matt: Was it, was it Justin who liked the internet and hosting bit of it? 00:04:55.203 --> 00:04:58.043 Like, was it, was he building, or were you both building websites on the side? 00:04:58.043 --> 00:05:00.033 Like, what was it about hosting that was like, Oh, this is 00:05:00.033 --> 00:05:01.443 a market I want to go into? 00:05:02.558 --> 00:05:06.688 scott: Yeah, so I mean, hosting is just foundational to every online business 00:05:06.708 --> 00:05:10.478 in every facet, you know, even with like site building esque type solutions 00:05:10.478 --> 00:05:13.558 and other types of SaaS platforms that you might be able to like build a 00:05:13.558 --> 00:05:17.978 business around, you still need hosting at the bottom rung of everything. 00:05:17.978 --> 00:05:21.338 And that was very interesting to me, you know, how do we, how do we create 00:05:21.348 --> 00:05:24.988 this foundational level of service that is just better than what else 00:05:24.988 --> 00:05:28.493 is, you know, from our viewpoint, it started with infrastructure, right? 00:05:28.493 --> 00:05:32.573 If you own the whole stack, you can really affect change on the whole stack. 00:05:32.573 --> 00:05:35.323 So, you know, that started with, you know, ultimately it started with a 00:05:35.323 --> 00:05:38.363 single server and that, you know, obviously ballooned into racks and 00:05:38.363 --> 00:05:41.503 top of rack switches and core routing and edge routing and everything else, 00:05:41.503 --> 00:05:43.973 eventually, you know, building out our own network and incorporating all those 00:05:43.983 --> 00:05:47.493 elements of it, you know, our own portal, you know, team, obviously, you know, 00:05:47.493 --> 00:05:49.573 big piece of, of, of growth as well. 00:05:49.923 --> 00:05:53.833 but it really just, came from a point of, you know, Justin was certainly, 00:05:54.273 --> 00:05:57.693 he, he worked in the same data center that we co load our first, server. 00:05:57.693 --> 00:06:01.153 And so naturally he kind of had an inkling in a, in an in for us, 00:06:01.443 --> 00:06:04.533 made sense at the time, but no, I mean, I was building websites, so 00:06:04.533 --> 00:06:06.413 that was kind of my, my take on it. 00:06:06.433 --> 00:06:10.623 I, you know, from a, from a, you know, I w I had a small design agency and I 00:06:10.623 --> 00:06:12.403 would, I would build develop the websites. 00:06:12.433 --> 00:06:14.643 I had a small team with me, at the time. 00:06:14.663 --> 00:06:16.503 And, Yeah, the writing was on the wall. 00:06:16.503 --> 00:06:19.473 I mean, service was lacking then, in the hosting industry, it's 00:06:19.473 --> 00:06:21.863 lacking perhaps even more now. 00:06:21.863 --> 00:06:26.133 So, you know, we just stayed true to our guns and, you know, service was 00:06:26.133 --> 00:06:27.873 what we wanted to dig our heels into. 00:06:27.873 --> 00:06:29.273 And that's what we, that's what we did. 00:06:29.273 --> 00:06:31.533 But, always online, you know, ever, ever since. 00:06:31.768 --> 00:06:35.758 You know, you could be really, at, you know, as, as young as I can remember, 00:06:35.758 --> 00:06:39.448 I was, I was, I was on the computer, figuring out ways to, you know, build this 00:06:39.448 --> 00:06:43.018 and, and, and make something interesting and, and Justin, you know, being more 00:06:43.018 --> 00:06:46.648 of a system admin infrastructure, role, it, it really just, it just 00:06:46.648 --> 00:06:49.528 really blended itself quite well, you know, 14 years later, here we are. 00:06:50.078 --> 00:06:52.628 matt: For you young kids out there, co load server. 00:06:52.668 --> 00:06:57.498 So what that is is people used to, I used to, because way back in the day 00:06:57.498 --> 00:07:01.178 I worked for an ISP internet service provider before my, my job at Pagely, 00:07:01.178 --> 00:07:06.818 well before my job at Pagely, I used to, I used to be the system admin for this web 00:07:06.818 --> 00:07:11.258 hosting company where I would throw Dell servers in the back of my Nissan Maxima. 00:07:11.853 --> 00:07:16.523 Drive it to the co location, install it, plug it in, put in the hard 00:07:16.533 --> 00:07:18.683 drives, format, put everything in. 00:07:18.883 --> 00:07:22.503 And now you couldn't just go to a website and just spin up 00:07:22.523 --> 00:07:24.473 a cluster of servers back then. 00:07:24.913 --> 00:07:27.893 but even today it sounds like you're building out that same infrastructure. 00:07:27.893 --> 00:07:34.083 Like you're buying the steel and Selling that off with your layer of probably 00:07:34.083 --> 00:07:35.703 software and service on top of it. 00:07:35.703 --> 00:07:39.073 Do you, do you now own the co loc, the co location or the data center? 00:07:39.073 --> 00:07:42.633 Do you rent what, you know, what can you tell us about what you own at big 00:07:42.633 --> 00:07:43.823 scoots to give people the picture? 00:07:44.808 --> 00:07:45.128 scott: Yeah. 00:07:45.128 --> 00:07:47.028 So the, you know, the, the, the metal, right. 00:07:47.028 --> 00:07:50.648 The, the bare metal, I guess, as, as they say, yeah, all owned and operated 00:07:50.648 --> 00:07:55.288 completely out of iOS, we have an on prem office, adjacent to our suite in, the 00:07:55.288 --> 00:07:59.008 care, the most connected carrier neutral facility in North America, 350 Cermak. 00:07:59.008 --> 00:08:00.708 So it's given us an opportunity. 00:08:00.778 --> 00:08:03.198 Ultimately we're just down the street from where we started, but 00:08:03.428 --> 00:08:04.178 it's given us the opportunity. 00:08:04.568 --> 00:08:09.098 a very interesting opportunity to ultimately engulf ourself in the most 00:08:09.098 --> 00:08:12.988 connected location, effectively in North America, just, just by its positioning 00:08:12.988 --> 00:08:17.528 and its age and, and sort of its, its, its prowess in, in, in the telecom area. 00:08:17.848 --> 00:08:19.848 you know, there's actually a, but I think, I think it's like a better 00:08:19.848 --> 00:08:22.618 part of a five year wait list now to get into the data center, but we 00:08:22.618 --> 00:08:25.718 were just kind of, kind of young and silly and we're like, Oh, that's cool. 00:08:25.998 --> 00:08:28.888 You know, you know, we didn't at the time we were just kind of working, 00:08:28.898 --> 00:08:31.068 working the, you know, working the path, trying to figure out, you know, 00:08:31.068 --> 00:08:34.288 the best deal and whatnot, but it really, it really turned itself into a 00:08:34.288 --> 00:08:35.898 really, really, really good decision. 00:08:35.918 --> 00:08:39.328 from a, from DC ops and sort of logistical perspective, you know, Chicago is 00:08:39.328 --> 00:08:42.128 really well positioned for a lot of, infrastructure providers in the area, 00:08:42.368 --> 00:08:45.768 like, like CDW, you know, super micro just to hop, skip and a jump away. 00:08:45.958 --> 00:08:48.158 you know, Dell has a, has a, has a warehouse there. 00:08:48.158 --> 00:08:50.498 it's very easy relative to the rest of the country to get 00:08:50.498 --> 00:08:51.588 our hands on infrastructure. 00:08:51.868 --> 00:08:54.868 And, as of late, that's been more important than quite some time ago. 00:08:54.868 --> 00:08:57.698 I mean, COVID really kind of messed up a lot of the supply chains, but, 00:08:58.098 --> 00:09:02.028 having your own bare metal really allows you to create really, really 00:09:02.028 --> 00:09:05.878 interesting, dynamics around the amount of resources you can provide. 00:09:05.878 --> 00:09:05.893 Good. 00:09:06.223 --> 00:09:10.173 for the, for ultimately the amount of dollars that the end user or WordPress 00:09:10.173 --> 00:09:16.383 site owner might spend, for example, in cloud computing, you typically get 00:09:16.493 --> 00:09:22.383 priced out of higher, clock speed CPU cores, which can very oftentimes be a 00:09:22.383 --> 00:09:24.233 major contributing factor to performance. 00:09:24.503 --> 00:09:27.273 If you're a dynamic site like e commerce or membership or something 00:09:27.273 --> 00:09:29.893 like that, you're going to find that CPU becomes your bottleneck. 00:09:29.913 --> 00:09:32.363 You know, all those dynamic queries need to get funneled on through CPU. 00:09:32.363 --> 00:09:35.653 The faster it is, the better chance you have of those completing in a 00:09:35.653 --> 00:09:39.143 good amount of time for your visitors, find their way off, off your page. 00:09:39.403 --> 00:09:42.913 if you can build yourself a piece of infrastructure ultimately, and, and 00:09:42.913 --> 00:09:47.403 provide that piece of infrastructure for what could be, maybe a 20 or 30 percent 00:09:47.403 --> 00:09:51.543 cost savings for somewhere on the order of about four or five times the amount of CPU 00:09:51.543 --> 00:09:53.343 and memory, that's an interesting dynamic. 00:09:53.343 --> 00:09:56.933 That's an interesting dynamic to a, a site owner who can, who can, who can 00:09:56.943 --> 00:10:01.713 manage their scaling costs and not have to worry about performance at the same time. 00:10:02.033 --> 00:10:05.103 if you look to scale horizontally, in the. 00:10:05.623 --> 00:10:08.583 Or rather vertically, you know, if you look to scale up your CPU, in a lot 00:10:08.583 --> 00:10:11.333 of cases, you just run out of choices, you know, if you're with some of the 00:10:11.333 --> 00:10:15.683 larger providers, you're given X amount of PHP processes and the CPU is just 00:10:15.693 --> 00:10:20.443 given to you regardless of, what you would prefer or not, we can custom build 00:10:20.443 --> 00:10:25.053 that solution and ultimately we custom build those solutions with really cost 00:10:25.053 --> 00:10:28.033 effective, Or sort of a profile in mind. 00:10:28.033 --> 00:10:32.453 So we're going to use our knowledge, select the right CPUs for the right 00:10:32.453 --> 00:10:37.103 workload, and ultimately be packaged those in plans that are easy to sign up 00:10:37.103 --> 00:10:41.413 with on our website, but signing up for a similarly priced plan between us and 00:10:41.413 --> 00:10:45.933 our competitors, by the fact that we own our own infrastructure, we're able to 00:10:45.953 --> 00:10:48.883 be, Considerably more resource abundant. 00:10:49.183 --> 00:10:52.803 we layer on top of that, a lot of managed services, a lot of human hours, time and 00:10:52.803 --> 00:10:55.013 attention being spent on all these sites. 00:10:55.023 --> 00:10:57.943 So naturally our price points still need to kind of be where they are to 00:10:57.953 --> 00:11:01.603 deliver the level of service that we, we do deliver, but it creates this 00:11:01.603 --> 00:11:05.663 really, really interesting dynamic where you can ultimately save money in most 00:11:05.683 --> 00:11:07.533 cases and, and hit those, those targets. 00:11:07.778 --> 00:11:11.078 Really, really top levels of service and performance at the same time. 00:11:11.078 --> 00:11:12.448 So really, really interesting dynamic. 00:11:12.768 --> 00:11:15.958 And it's a lot of that's predicated on the fact that we own and operate 00:11:15.958 --> 00:11:19.898 our infrastructure, you know, a burden to bear most hosts wouldn't want, but 00:11:19.908 --> 00:11:23.508 being that we've done it for so long, we've become very good at it and, 00:11:23.508 --> 00:11:25.938 naturally it's, it's, it's exciting. 00:11:26.128 --> 00:11:26.848 It's really exciting. 00:11:27.873 --> 00:11:32.173 matt: Did you start the company, well let's say 14 years ago, were you, did 00:11:32.173 --> 00:11:35.723 you start with WordPress hosting in mind or was it just traditional hosting? 00:11:35.723 --> 00:11:39.603 Hey, bring over your HTML and static sites or whatever and then you 00:11:39.643 --> 00:11:41.133 moved into WordPress eventually. 00:11:41.133 --> 00:11:42.273 How did that transition happen? 00:11:42.283 --> 00:11:45.903 Or did you start with WordPress sort of as a leading, as a leading service? 00:11:46.803 --> 00:11:47.133 scott: Yeah. 00:11:47.133 --> 00:11:49.583 So, you know, I mean, WordPress certainly existed at the time. 00:11:49.583 --> 00:11:50.203 That's for sure. 00:11:50.223 --> 00:11:51.903 but it didn't exist as we know it today. 00:11:51.903 --> 00:11:54.843 It was more of like a blogging type platform. 00:11:55.193 --> 00:11:58.123 wasn't a lot of business or commerce that existed in the same way that 00:11:58.123 --> 00:12:00.133 it, that it does on it now today. 00:12:00.443 --> 00:12:04.333 we existed in Chicago with sort of a focus on the Chicago land businesses. 00:12:04.343 --> 00:12:09.013 So some fortune 500s, you know, some folks who wanted to leave the on prem 00:12:09.323 --> 00:12:13.233 Sort of, infrastructure management, to a professional organization such 00:12:13.233 --> 00:12:16.343 as ourselves, you know, whether it be hospitals or businesses or what have you 00:12:16.343 --> 00:12:19.313 folks who needed their infrastructure managed, at the time we're doing like 00:12:19.313 --> 00:12:20.673 private clouds and stuff like that too. 00:12:20.673 --> 00:12:25.593 This predates, you know, obviously AWS and whatnot, you know, but, even at that 00:12:25.593 --> 00:12:28.093 time we, we were managing WordPress. 00:12:28.133 --> 00:12:29.063 we just didn't really. 00:12:29.363 --> 00:12:30.813 Call it managed WordPress. 00:12:30.833 --> 00:12:32.733 We were just a managed hosting provider. 00:12:32.983 --> 00:12:37.553 these days we've sort of coined the phrase site specific management, and 00:12:37.553 --> 00:12:41.043 that goes much more in line with the level of service we aim to deliver. 00:12:41.043 --> 00:12:43.943 And also cause kind of a unique nature in which we provide 00:12:44.323 --> 00:12:45.403 managed WordPress services. 00:12:45.403 --> 00:12:48.133 So site specific to us, what that means is like we're logging into 00:12:48.133 --> 00:12:51.643 your actual website, we're, we're adjusting plugin configurations. 00:12:51.643 --> 00:12:52.413 We're watching for. 00:12:52.778 --> 00:12:55.768 You know, stuck PHP processes and plugin conflicts and database 00:12:55.798 --> 00:12:58.288 inefficiencies and all these other sorts of things that will plague 00:12:58.308 --> 00:12:59.878 every single WordPress site out there. 00:13:00.128 --> 00:13:04.898 and we're sort of the partner to a WordPress site owner to alleviate 00:13:05.038 --> 00:13:08.448 those technical challenges and, and do so in a lot of cases proactively. 00:13:08.868 --> 00:13:13.818 so the sort of bridge between, you know, where we started as sort of a managed 00:13:14.098 --> 00:13:18.568 services provider and where we became, you know, sort of this managed site specific. 00:13:18.903 --> 00:13:23.623 WordPress provider is really just more defining what it was 00:13:23.633 --> 00:13:25.103 that we set out to originally do. 00:13:25.113 --> 00:13:26.713 We were always going to do that. 00:13:26.723 --> 00:13:31.763 We were always going to be very hands on and part of the, the, the customers, 00:13:31.763 --> 00:13:36.153 the WordPress, the site owners or the application owners, team ultimately. 00:13:36.373 --> 00:13:39.593 but we became, much more sort of entrenched with the WordPress 00:13:39.603 --> 00:13:42.603 community just because it was a much more exciting place to be. 00:13:42.913 --> 00:13:44.583 I mean, there's so much going on. 00:13:44.918 --> 00:13:45.788 All of the time. 00:13:46.058 --> 00:13:49.318 it's incredible to see some of these businesses, that exist, in 00:13:49.318 --> 00:13:50.608 and around the WordPress space. 00:13:50.608 --> 00:13:54.358 And it's, it's amazing being part of it, but, you know, just the site specific 00:13:54.558 --> 00:13:57.408 sort of nature of our, our service lends itself very well to WordPress. 00:13:57.418 --> 00:14:00.388 Cause as a WordPress site owner, you're going to want to focus 00:14:00.388 --> 00:14:01.328 on building your business. 00:14:01.628 --> 00:14:04.048 You're not going to necessarily want to focus on building a technical team. 00:14:04.098 --> 00:14:06.358 So it was just, it was just such a, such an easy fit. 00:14:07.753 --> 00:14:12.133 matt: I, this might be, maybe Justin remembers the pain of this, but I remember 00:14:12.133 --> 00:14:16.253 back in the day when I was the, the sysadmin, so the question is, do you, do 00:14:16.253 --> 00:14:19.993 you have a thing that like kept you up at night when you first started the business? 00:14:19.993 --> 00:14:22.503 Was there like an application that kept crashing that you're like, Oh 00:14:22.503 --> 00:14:25.343 my God, there's this thing I have to do at like two in the morning every 00:14:25.353 --> 00:14:27.823 Saturday that I don't want to do for me. 00:14:27.823 --> 00:14:29.033 I remember, no. 00:14:29.183 --> 00:14:33.723 When I was at this ISP, we were like one of the very first customers when cPanel 00:14:33.723 --> 00:14:38.593 came out and there was, I think Ion Cube was the name of it, like an email client. 00:14:38.613 --> 00:14:39.773 Maybe it still exists today. 00:14:39.963 --> 00:14:44.013 I remember that's that that server would die all the time on me. 00:14:44.313 --> 00:14:48.493 And we also had a Windows IIS server that we constantly had to, 00:14:48.543 --> 00:14:52.743 VPN and reboot like always on a Saturday afternoon in the summertime. 00:14:53.123 --> 00:14:56.113 We had to do that do you have any of those those fun? 00:14:56.403 --> 00:15:00.043 Hopefully fun, moments when you were first growing the business That was particularly 00:15:00.043 --> 00:15:03.463 challenging that you can kind of look back on now and say well that was tough 00:15:03.483 --> 00:15:04.953 then But I can kind of laugh at it now 00:15:06.568 --> 00:15:09.488 scott: I mean, you definitely called out like the two, you know, number one and 00:15:09.488 --> 00:15:14.328 number two, maybe they're both tied at number one in terms of, you know, kind 00:15:14.328 --> 00:15:17.978 of problem children over the years for any and all system admins, you know, you 00:15:17.978 --> 00:15:22.298 described a mail server, which is just, you know, incredibly taxing to manage. 00:15:22.648 --> 00:15:25.608 and then you also, you know, and then windows just in a nutshell is 00:15:25.608 --> 00:15:29.938 always kind of a beast of its own, but, certainly those two are good. 00:15:29.953 --> 00:15:35.173 Good front runners, network operations and just dealing with scale, I would say 00:15:35.173 --> 00:15:39.213 is, is absolutely, you know, number one on the list, though, you know, network 00:15:39.213 --> 00:15:43.913 effects, everything it's, it, you know, delivers entire production traffic to 00:15:43.923 --> 00:15:48.508 everything underneath it and figuring out, you know, sort of creative solutions 00:15:48.508 --> 00:15:50.158 to otherwise very complicated problems. 00:15:50.198 --> 00:15:52.138 certainly, certainly kept me up at night. 00:15:52.348 --> 00:15:56.938 but, you know, higher, higher, good team and, and those problems tend to go away. 00:15:56.938 --> 00:16:00.828 So that's, that's been sort of a, the, probably the most traumatic thing over 00:16:00.828 --> 00:16:04.548 the years, I would say trying to figure out how to manage and effectively run, you 00:16:04.548 --> 00:16:09.118 know, enterprise class network and, And, you know, we, we did, it was exciting. 00:16:09.148 --> 00:16:12.918 I, I think, you know, I, I might even throw like WordPress into the ring there, 00:16:12.918 --> 00:16:16.978 you know, in the early days, like it didn't have, a lot of the same support for 00:16:16.988 --> 00:16:18.458 various services that has today, right. 00:16:18.478 --> 00:16:21.318 Even, even then a lot of people wanted to push the envelope on performance, 00:16:21.648 --> 00:16:25.838 but things like, you know, NGINX and, and Lightspeed and PHP, FPM, and like 00:16:25.838 --> 00:16:28.238 some of those other sorts of things that are just like commonplace every day. 00:16:28.238 --> 00:16:28.738 I mean, certainly. 00:16:28.863 --> 00:16:30.993 Like CloudFlare above all else. 00:16:31.263 --> 00:16:32.443 you know, it just, it just didn't exist. 00:16:32.443 --> 00:16:35.873 So you would have, you know, services constantly failing, you know, when you 00:16:35.873 --> 00:16:39.703 were trying to push the envelope for WordPress performance, and, it was, 00:16:39.723 --> 00:16:44.163 it was incredibly complicated and, and very difficult to manage at scale. 00:16:44.213 --> 00:16:47.643 back then before, you know, systems were in place and, and, and, you 00:16:47.643 --> 00:16:49.423 know, processes are as they are today. 00:16:50.778 --> 00:16:53.488 matt: I want to talk about growing big scoots. 00:16:53.898 --> 00:16:56.388 Do you have any outside investment? 00:16:56.608 --> 00:17:02.438 It's not hosting is not an easy game without probably some 00:17:02.438 --> 00:17:05.348 capital for certainly marketing promotion and stuff like that. 00:17:05.358 --> 00:17:07.308 We'll talk about that maybe in a moment. 00:17:07.828 --> 00:17:10.498 But how are those early days of scaling and growing the business? 00:17:10.773 --> 00:17:13.963 More hosting customers, more support staff, more engineers, 00:17:13.963 --> 00:17:14.873 et cetera, et cetera. 00:17:15.173 --> 00:17:17.003 How was that growth curve in the early days? 00:17:18.258 --> 00:17:21.048 scott: Yeah, the, a lot, a lot of pains, you know, a lot, a lot of pain and 00:17:21.048 --> 00:17:24.278 suffering, you know, blood, sweat and tears, as they say, there was, several 00:17:24.278 --> 00:17:28.118 years, I wanna, I wanna say the better part of, four or five years, you know, we 00:17:28.118 --> 00:17:31.708 didn't take a dime out of the business, everything was reinvested back into it, 00:17:31.728 --> 00:17:35.668 we were very lucky, very fortunate that we were both at times in our lives, You 00:17:35.668 --> 00:17:40.678 know, I mean, I used my student loans to fund my, my living, for example, you 00:17:40.678 --> 00:17:43.598 know, and, fortunately it worked out and could have been a bad, certainly a bad 00:17:43.608 --> 00:17:47.018 bet, but, you, you know, a lot of growing pains, especially as an infrastructure 00:17:47.018 --> 00:17:50.468 provider, I mean, on, you know, kind of unmatched really, because you, you think 00:17:50.468 --> 00:17:53.828 about scale and you think about this sort of like linear, ahead of you and you 00:17:53.838 --> 00:17:56.218 think to yourself, okay, you know, we're going to fill up this one server and then 00:17:56.218 --> 00:17:58.218 we're going to buy another one and we're going to, you know, use the exact same 00:17:58.218 --> 00:18:00.268 amount of clients that we're going to do it again and we're going to do it again. 00:18:00.658 --> 00:18:02.808 But we don't realize is that, you know, drives fail. 00:18:02.808 --> 00:18:05.378 You don't, you know, clients use different amounts of resources. 00:18:05.378 --> 00:18:06.618 You know, you eventually need to get. 00:18:06.943 --> 00:18:10.523 Switches, you know, you, you realize that there's a cost associated with that 00:18:10.523 --> 00:18:13.693 and managing those and they need to be redundant and then they need uplinks. 00:18:13.693 --> 00:18:16.403 And how do you get a riser from one part of the building to the other one? 00:18:16.403 --> 00:18:17.573 Now you need multiple uplinks. 00:18:17.603 --> 00:18:20.653 Now you need DDoS protection that it just kind of goes on and on and on and on. 00:18:21.043 --> 00:18:24.593 And you really, you know, we were a bootstrap business. 00:18:24.623 --> 00:18:27.553 matt: And then rinse and repeat that like five years later when the technology, 00:18:27.613 --> 00:18:31.793 you know, the new Intel chips come out a new AMD to now you're like, okay, now the 00:18:31.793 --> 00:18:35.473 faster hard drives are out and then you find yourself reinvesting in that capital. 00:18:35.493 --> 00:18:35.753 Yeah. 00:18:36.063 --> 00:18:37.093 scott: It really just never stopped. 00:18:37.093 --> 00:18:39.363 I mean, originally, you know, everybody were on spindles and 00:18:39.363 --> 00:18:40.283 then those spindles were okay. 00:18:40.283 --> 00:18:41.563 We're doing a 15k. 00:18:41.563 --> 00:18:42.183 I still remember them. 00:18:42.183 --> 00:18:42.563 Everybody was 00:18:42.713 --> 00:18:43.723 matt: Yeah, I remember those 00:18:43.803 --> 00:18:45.113 scott: 7200 to 15k. 00:18:45.393 --> 00:18:47.083 Yeah, the cheetahs, right? 00:18:47.323 --> 00:18:48.803 Very good cheetah drives, I think. 00:18:48.813 --> 00:18:51.443 And then, you know, they did almost nothing, but, you know, 00:18:51.443 --> 00:18:52.323 it was exciting at the time. 00:18:52.703 --> 00:18:54.223 Super expensive for almost nothing. 00:18:54.533 --> 00:18:57.303 And then, you know, eventually it transversed into, you 00:18:57.303 --> 00:18:58.383 know, caching layer, right? 00:18:58.383 --> 00:19:01.523 SSEs are very expensive, but you could incorporate them, like, Within 00:19:01.523 --> 00:19:02.683 the caching layer on a server. 00:19:02.683 --> 00:19:05.663 So you have SSD caching with spindle drive supporting the majority of it. 00:19:05.863 --> 00:19:09.913 at some point in time, you know, central storage was, was part of our, part of our 00:19:09.913 --> 00:19:13.633 platform where we would, we actually had, you know, sans and we would deploy, you 00:19:13.633 --> 00:19:17.603 know, enterprise SSDs in there and it's just, you know, network, right, like fiber 00:19:17.603 --> 00:19:22.213 optics, you know, how, how, how do you, how do you scale from a, you know, single 00:19:22.213 --> 00:19:24.423 siloed, you know, virtual machine up into. 00:19:24.883 --> 00:19:29.083 You know, a real solid like internal network fabric where you know you do have 00:19:29.083 --> 00:19:33.523 load balancing and all this other sort of stuff and it just there's so many points. 00:19:33.868 --> 00:19:37.208 You know, literally hundreds, you know, you asked a somewhat simple question, 00:19:37.208 --> 00:19:41.968 but there's probably hundreds of like lived examples of how it was sort of 00:19:41.968 --> 00:19:46.508 like a serious pain point and sort of overcoming it, was, was just, you know, 00:19:46.548 --> 00:19:48.048 frankly, a lot of trial and error. 00:19:48.368 --> 00:19:49.228 you know, we're fortunate. 00:19:49.588 --> 00:19:55.508 Today to have a really, really, really amazing team where we can actually think 00:19:55.528 --> 00:20:01.058 through problems and like, you know, make, make good decisions right out of the gate. 00:20:01.508 --> 00:20:03.898 But, yeah, in those early days, you know, it was just, just Justin 00:20:03.898 --> 00:20:05.208 and I just, just figuring it out. 00:20:05.228 --> 00:20:08.228 And it was, it was, it was, It was a lot of work, a lot of stress. 00:20:08.568 --> 00:20:09.918 you know, a lot of examples. 00:20:10.048 --> 00:20:13.128 I have this one, one, one very vivid example of, I was 00:20:13.128 --> 00:20:15.158 doing a, biomedical, yeah. 00:20:15.348 --> 00:20:15.698 what was it? 00:20:15.718 --> 00:20:17.458 Bioengineering, final exam. 00:20:17.508 --> 00:20:21.168 And, I skipped the last question so I could head out into the hall to, 00:20:21.168 --> 00:20:25.738 to answer a client call and, teacher was super frustrated, super mad, 00:20:25.738 --> 00:20:28.138 told her what I was doing and she gave me the extra time later in the 00:20:28.138 --> 00:20:29.558 day to finish up that last question. 00:20:29.558 --> 00:20:32.968 But, you know, just, just a lot of that kind of like back and forth, 00:20:32.988 --> 00:20:35.808 trying to, trying to kind of make life work at the same time you're, 00:20:35.808 --> 00:20:36.638 you're trying to run a business. 00:20:36.658 --> 00:20:37.808 But, certainly that was. 00:20:38.173 --> 00:20:39.123 That was many years ago. 00:20:39.413 --> 00:20:43.433 but frankly, similar problems today, you know, it's a lot of, a lot of, you 00:20:43.433 --> 00:20:46.523 know, how do you overcome, you know, the next step and, you know, you, you 00:20:46.533 --> 00:20:49.503 think back on the experience that you've had, hopefully you lean into the better 00:20:49.503 --> 00:20:51.133 decisions than the, than the worst ones. 00:20:51.443 --> 00:20:53.973 And, if you're lucky, you have a good team to help support you as well. 00:20:54.873 --> 00:20:59.083 matt: It's a double edged sword hosting and maybe even 00:20:59.083 --> 00:21:01.273 specifically manage hosting. 00:21:01.283 --> 00:21:05.553 You do have looking on the website, you do have sort of standard shared hosting. 00:21:05.553 --> 00:21:07.783 I think I saw it starts for 7 a month. 00:21:08.063 --> 00:21:10.623 Maybe that was with the annual pricing, but even WordPress 00:21:10.783 --> 00:21:12.813 hosting starts at 35 a month. 00:21:12.813 --> 00:21:16.873 Again, that might be annual pricing, but still what we have 00:21:16.873 --> 00:21:19.903 is this conundrum where folks. 00:21:20.353 --> 00:21:21.693 See wordpress. 00:21:21.953 --> 00:21:23.893 It's free, right? 00:21:23.923 --> 00:21:26.103 There's so many web hosts available. 00:21:26.353 --> 00:21:29.823 There's always this sort of race to the bottom with customers. 00:21:30.033 --> 00:21:32.573 And if we're just looking at wordpress managed hosting, a lot 00:21:32.573 --> 00:21:35.403 of people might look at that and go, Oh my God, 35 40 bucks a month. 00:21:35.693 --> 00:21:36.693 I don't want to pay that. 00:21:36.933 --> 00:21:37.193 Right? 00:21:37.493 --> 00:21:44.843 So on one hand, you have this challenge where that sort of sets the, Sets the tone 00:21:44.843 --> 00:21:49.013 for the customer customer who comes to you who's willing to spend 40 50 bucks a month 00:21:49.333 --> 00:21:54.323 Might be a better customer than the person who only wants to spend five bucks a month 00:21:54.823 --> 00:21:57.083 The challenge is 30 40 bucks a month. 00:21:57.183 --> 00:21:58.373 You still need a lot of them. 00:21:58.733 --> 00:22:04.773 All right to really push this thing forward I remember at my old gig our 00:22:04.773 --> 00:22:08.003 entry level price And so then there's the flip side which was the one of 00:22:08.003 --> 00:22:12.168 the problems that that I had as a account executive is You Our hosting 00:22:12.168 --> 00:22:14.578 started at 500 a month minimum. 00:22:15.098 --> 00:22:18.828 So now, now we go to the other end of the spectrum where people 00:22:18.828 --> 00:22:21.348 are like, Oh my God, 500 a month. 00:22:21.378 --> 00:22:22.808 Like, what are you going to do for me? 00:22:22.808 --> 00:22:26.538 And it's like, no, no, like really to support WordPress, it takes a lot, right? 00:22:26.538 --> 00:22:27.468 Like it takes a lot. 00:22:28.108 --> 00:22:29.838 And that's where your service kicks in. 00:22:29.848 --> 00:22:34.668 How do you balance how much service you're giving folks, at 00:22:34.668 --> 00:22:37.233 still such Low affordable prices. 00:22:37.243 --> 00:22:42.013 Tim was mentioning before customers rave about you all and customers 00:22:42.013 --> 00:22:44.823 are super happy, you know, and they're super happy running into 00:22:45.233 --> 00:22:48.203 Tim at the upcoming word camps and previous word camps he's been to. 00:22:48.463 --> 00:22:49.893 So how do you balance that? 00:22:49.903 --> 00:22:54.363 How much service and support you provide for an ecosystem that just requires 00:22:54.363 --> 00:22:56.776 so much of it, especially WordPress. 00:22:58.106 --> 00:22:58.386 scott: Yeah. 00:22:58.386 --> 00:23:01.321 Well, I mean, to be clear, I mean, You know, we built a business 00:23:01.351 --> 00:23:03.211 on, on 5 a month customers. 00:23:03.221 --> 00:23:07.341 So we're, you know, we, we love every, every shape and size 00:23:07.371 --> 00:23:09.121 of, of, of a customer profile. 00:23:09.441 --> 00:23:13.131 and, I, I like to think that we deliver at every level as well. 00:23:13.191 --> 00:23:15.381 naturally shared hosting is meant to be. 00:23:15.746 --> 00:23:18.216 More of a lower cost, you know, shared solution. 00:23:18.236 --> 00:23:21.956 And the expectation is that there's more of a do it yourself element to it. 00:23:22.226 --> 00:23:25.176 manage WordPress, I think would be impossible to deliver at the level 00:23:25.176 --> 00:23:29.346 that we do it at, if we didn't have certain margins baked into our business, 00:23:29.806 --> 00:23:32.336 being that we own and operate our own infrastructure, our own network, 00:23:32.336 --> 00:23:34.966 our own data center space and what have you, you know, the Google. 00:23:35.871 --> 00:23:38.151 Cuts as it were, you know, the margins that they take away 00:23:38.151 --> 00:23:39.581 from business are significant. 00:23:39.921 --> 00:23:42.321 we're also a business that's laser focused on service. 00:23:42.331 --> 00:23:43.701 So we're known for service. 00:23:43.711 --> 00:23:47.111 We're not known for that race to the bottom pricing and, you 00:23:47.111 --> 00:23:48.271 know, black Friday promotions. 00:23:48.271 --> 00:23:50.601 So if you sign up with us, it's very likely that. 00:23:50.911 --> 00:23:51.731 You're never going to leave. 00:23:51.781 --> 00:23:55.381 you know, we have a churn, rate of, you know, less than 00:23:55.681 --> 00:23:56.381 I want to say it was like 0. 00:23:56.381 --> 00:24:01.561 4%, last time I looked and, you know, and, and you don't see that, 00:24:01.561 --> 00:24:04.851 you don't see that in hosting people just chase the solution, right? 00:24:04.851 --> 00:24:07.671 Like people have problems, they have issues that they can't necessarily get 00:24:07.671 --> 00:24:11.301 solved and they keep looking for a new place to get those solutions solved. 00:24:11.611 --> 00:24:13.561 ultimately we, we solve those solutions. 00:24:13.811 --> 00:24:15.821 So although our price points might be. 00:24:15.966 --> 00:24:17.476 Really value centric. 00:24:17.766 --> 00:24:20.896 The reality is, is that we make up costs on the infrastructure 00:24:20.896 --> 00:24:21.876 and network side of things. 00:24:22.046 --> 00:24:24.526 We also make up a lot of costs on customer acquisition because 00:24:24.526 --> 00:24:25.906 we really don't have much. 00:24:26.206 --> 00:24:31.286 The CAC, it's really flatlined around just people knowing the level of service 00:24:31.286 --> 00:24:35.786 that we deliver on and expecting it, certainly keeping us honest about it. 00:24:36.036 --> 00:24:40.936 but we have a solution and a system and a platform that delivers and does so. 00:24:41.296 --> 00:24:41.906 every time. 00:24:42.146 --> 00:24:46.716 I would add to that, that folks on the bottom end of the market, you 00:24:46.716 --> 00:24:50.086 know, who are just getting started for the first time, all the way up, 00:24:50.486 --> 00:24:54.736 Through effectively billion dollar companies and in certain elements. 00:24:55.136 --> 00:24:59.126 they all lack the same thing in and around hosting in, in that 00:24:59.136 --> 00:25:01.466 they don't have good service. 00:25:01.566 --> 00:25:04.986 folks on the upper end in the agency realm, they don't have 00:25:06.636 --> 00:25:07.826 clients, execs, managers. 00:25:07.836 --> 00:25:12.196 They don't have system admins senior enough to be able to identify. 00:25:12.961 --> 00:25:16.471 Complex issues, improve core vitals and performance on like a site specific 00:25:16.471 --> 00:25:21.311 level and do so repetitively across like their entire portfolio And on the on the 00:25:21.321 --> 00:25:24.771 on the other end of the spectrum folks getting started for the first time They 00:25:24.771 --> 00:25:28.731 don't necessarily they can't find sort of the hand holding And the appreciation 00:25:28.981 --> 00:25:32.511 and the time well spent with with each and every person to really understand 00:25:32.511 --> 00:25:35.721 what their problems are You know get them over that first hurdle, even if 00:25:35.721 --> 00:25:38.541 it's basic things like logging into wordpress installing a theme You know, 00:25:38.541 --> 00:25:43.486 these are types of things that we're very happy to do um And, And it's great. 00:25:43.546 --> 00:25:44.506 It's great for business. 00:25:44.506 --> 00:25:45.816 You know, people like to talk about it. 00:25:46.016 --> 00:25:48.766 You know, you think about, you know, your, your everyday life and issues that 00:25:48.766 --> 00:25:51.556 you've had, perhaps, outside of hosting. 00:25:51.576 --> 00:25:54.106 You know, you can certainly draw a lot of issues from hosting, but if 00:25:54.106 --> 00:25:56.986 you look outside of hosting, you think about other areas of your life, whether 00:25:56.986 --> 00:25:59.566 it be your, I don't know, your cell phone bill or your, your internet 00:25:59.566 --> 00:26:00.856 or your cable provider or whatever. 00:26:01.166 --> 00:26:01.786 There's always issues. 00:26:01.786 --> 00:26:02.756 If you, if you call them. 00:26:03.026 --> 00:26:05.256 They don't respond for a week, they send you a letter in mail 00:26:05.256 --> 00:26:07.576 to upsell, meanwhile, you know, you're having a cable for a month. 00:26:07.786 --> 00:26:08.896 Like, that's a common scenario. 00:26:09.196 --> 00:26:12.246 if that same cable provider, alternatively, you know, showed up on 00:26:12.246 --> 00:26:16.546 your doorstep, you know, willing to fix that issue in a handful of seconds, or 00:26:16.556 --> 00:26:19.326 perhaps identified an issue before you even reached out for them, you know, 00:26:19.326 --> 00:26:23.556 you'd be so excited to share that good experience that it just, it just kind 00:26:23.556 --> 00:26:27.371 of becomes a little bit flabbergasting that, that, You know, you're, you're, 00:26:27.371 --> 00:26:29.831 you're just, you're just, you feel so excited about that opportunity 00:26:30.151 --> 00:26:31.411 to share that you, that you just do. 00:26:31.411 --> 00:26:36.901 So we have a very disproportionate amount of, you know, good conversations 00:26:36.941 --> 00:26:41.311 and, you know, likes and, and, and reshares and, and just, just sort 00:26:41.311 --> 00:26:44.501 of spreading the good word around and doing so at, at every level. 00:26:44.561 --> 00:26:48.011 you know, we have some of the largest WordPress agencies out there speaking 00:26:48.011 --> 00:26:51.151 to us about, you know, development for their clients because they know their 00:26:51.151 --> 00:26:55.021 clients are going to get, you know, bespoke solutions that are ultimately 00:26:55.021 --> 00:26:56.041 going to solve their specific problems. 00:26:56.056 --> 00:26:58.576 and at the same time, you know, people just getting started for the first time, 00:26:58.586 --> 00:27:01.976 maybe taking a course, you know, we're always in those conversations because 00:27:01.976 --> 00:27:05.766 it's like, okay, well, if you get stuck at this point, you know, the excuse is 00:27:05.766 --> 00:27:07.986 going to help and it just makes it easy. 00:27:08.941 --> 00:27:13.161 matt: would you say word of mouth is one of the largest driving 00:27:13.161 --> 00:27:14.601 factors for growth in your business? 00:27:15.446 --> 00:27:15.766 scott: Yeah. 00:27:15.766 --> 00:27:19.316 I mean, it's, it's the only, it's the only driving factor. 00:27:19.316 --> 00:27:21.926 I mean, word of mouth is sort of the, the result. 00:27:22.236 --> 00:27:24.866 ultimately service is, is, is really what's important. 00:27:25.066 --> 00:27:27.276 You know, the way that I look at it as far as growing the business. 00:27:27.526 --> 00:27:30.066 Tim, our new CMO, he's come on board. 00:27:30.406 --> 00:27:34.336 you know, we're an interesting point in the business where, although we've 00:27:34.346 --> 00:27:37.886 become, you know, we're an established business, you know, with, you know, an 00:27:37.886 --> 00:27:41.896 industry leading service and platform, but we've never sort of told the story 00:27:41.916 --> 00:27:44.356 and sort of Tim's here trying to help. 00:27:45.966 --> 00:27:50.026 And it's interesting that the easiest story to tell is really just kind of 00:27:50.026 --> 00:27:53.066 listening, you know, getting out there and connecting with people and just sort of 00:27:53.076 --> 00:27:58.056 listening to the problems that ultimately we've done a pretty good job at solving, 00:27:58.056 --> 00:27:59.696 which is just just a lack of service. 00:27:59.706 --> 00:28:03.406 So, you know, having Cutting it infrastructure, really 00:28:03.406 --> 00:28:04.736 optimized network delivery. 00:28:05.036 --> 00:28:07.616 you know, call for enterprise relationships, you know, onboard 00:28:07.616 --> 00:28:10.056 solutions, engineers, like, you know, some of the best, best system 00:28:10.056 --> 00:28:13.816 admins that are out there, all this stuff is, is great for service. 00:28:13.816 --> 00:28:17.206 But ultimately, if you can listen to the problems that a customer is having 00:28:17.226 --> 00:28:21.616 and, and, and really deliberately deliver solutions on, on sort of 00:28:21.616 --> 00:28:23.346 a detailed per customer basis. 00:28:23.726 --> 00:28:26.826 it's, it's very unique, pretty hard to do. 00:28:26.886 --> 00:28:27.986 and, and frankly, we're. 00:28:28.421 --> 00:28:29.471 We're, we're darn good at it. 00:28:29.481 --> 00:28:33.681 So, telling the story just about service is, is really what 00:28:33.681 --> 00:28:35.121 our strategy is going forward. 00:28:36.101 --> 00:28:40.801 matt: You have three primary navigation items, on the Big Scoots website, 00:28:40.806 --> 00:28:46.631 and I would say that anyone who maybe saying that they have great support 00:28:46.631 --> 00:28:49.251 and great whatever human interaction. 00:28:50.041 --> 00:28:53.491 Would, it's very easy to sort of gut check that you go to their website and 00:28:53.491 --> 00:28:58.401 you look and you look at your three primary navigations, its product and then 00:28:58.401 --> 00:29:03.621 clients and why us and you're putting that clients, you know, your, your case 00:29:03.631 --> 00:29:06.591 studies, the, the folks that host with you and you're putting why us, you're 00:29:06.791 --> 00:29:10.421 sort of selling yourself first and foremost, in my opinion, anyway, whereas 00:29:10.421 --> 00:29:14.881 normally you might go to, I don't know, any sass or especially any hosting site 00:29:14.881 --> 00:29:18.181 and it's just going to be, you know, product features, pricing, Whatever, 00:29:18.181 --> 00:29:22.611 you know, support docs, you know, all in like the primary navigation, whereas 00:29:22.611 --> 00:29:26.181 you're leading with that, your, your little chat bubble actually says speak 00:29:26.181 --> 00:29:28.891 to a human versus just like get support. 00:29:29.161 --> 00:29:31.921 So let me just put you on the hot seat for a second. 00:29:32.431 --> 00:29:33.281 scott: Yeah, pop it open. 00:29:33.281 --> 00:29:34.361 See if you get a reply. 00:29:34.556 --> 00:29:34.796 matt: Yeah. 00:29:35.226 --> 00:29:36.816 No, I don't want to do, I don't want to do that live. 00:29:37.091 --> 00:29:37.721 scott: You'll get one. 00:29:38.111 --> 00:29:38.731 You'll get one. 00:29:39.386 --> 00:29:41.966 matt: what, what's your take on, on, on AI? 00:29:42.006 --> 00:29:45.466 I mean, a lot, I've been listening to, obviously I listen to a ton of podcasts. 00:29:45.486 --> 00:29:49.786 I have friends that are in the AI space who are building products for call 00:29:49.786 --> 00:29:54.416 centers for, you know, live chat support, trying to get everything done with AI. 00:29:54.416 --> 00:29:55.236 Do you have a take? 00:29:55.256 --> 00:29:59.156 Do you ever think like you'll switch to an AI generated chat system? 00:29:59.176 --> 00:30:01.786 What's your take on, on AI and how you can incorporate it? 00:30:02.531 --> 00:30:02.761 scott: Yeah. 00:30:02.761 --> 00:30:05.121 I mean, those, those are, those are two completely different 00:30:05.121 --> 00:30:06.411 questions in my opinion. 00:30:06.481 --> 00:30:09.111 you know, my, my take on AI is, you know, super exciting. 00:30:09.381 --> 00:30:13.371 how we'll utilize it as a business is really as an internal tool. 00:30:13.591 --> 00:30:15.581 we actually have some initial. 00:30:16.556 --> 00:30:19.776 Sort of inroads, you know, as, you know, naturally very technical people. 00:30:20.066 --> 00:30:22.926 there's just a lot of, interest and appreciation for what 00:30:22.926 --> 00:30:24.466 AI is and what it can do. 00:30:24.716 --> 00:30:27.246 so sort of, you know, let's call them a lot of kind of like after hour 00:30:27.246 --> 00:30:31.486 projects and what have you, in and amongst our team, really figuring 00:30:31.486 --> 00:30:37.856 out ways to find better solutions to commonly asked about or inquired about 00:30:37.856 --> 00:30:41.156 problems, really at no point in time. 00:30:41.946 --> 00:30:46.266 Ever with just sort of a stern and completely, you know, 00:30:46.656 --> 00:30:49.736 completely, honest, response. 00:30:49.766 --> 00:30:53.326 Would I, would I say that, you know, would it ever become sort of the 00:30:53.326 --> 00:30:57.426 first, Communication point with us. 00:30:57.426 --> 00:30:58.776 We would never put a bot up. 00:30:59.066 --> 00:31:03.366 We would never put AI between a customer and ourselves. 00:31:03.626 --> 00:31:06.996 we've done a lot with our portal already. 00:31:07.016 --> 00:31:09.786 So there's a customer facing portal very much in line with, you know, 00:31:09.786 --> 00:31:12.926 sort of a WP engine or Kinsta style portal, you know, where you can, you 00:31:12.926 --> 00:31:16.176 know, clone and stage and you request new installs and all the rest of it. 00:31:16.566 --> 00:31:18.136 That was that that's been a solution for us. 00:31:18.396 --> 00:31:19.136 For a very long time. 00:31:19.136 --> 00:31:20.116 And we're always iterating on it. 00:31:20.536 --> 00:31:23.236 in addition to that, that, that same portal provides insights to the admins. 00:31:23.246 --> 00:31:27.346 So our admins leverage the portal for really quick, proactive insights, 00:31:27.346 --> 00:31:30.696 you know, for example, uptime, downtime, responsiveness to, to a 00:31:30.726 --> 00:31:33.886 particular website, stuck processes, you know, storage issues, there's 00:31:33.906 --> 00:31:37.676 about 40 different data points that we monitor and we do so, proactively. 00:31:37.676 --> 00:31:40.086 So that way we can address issues in advance of them 00:31:40.086 --> 00:31:41.186 actually hitting the customer. 00:31:41.476 --> 00:31:42.576 A lot of our customers. 00:31:42.916 --> 00:31:47.146 actually their first outreach with us is a response to one of our proactive monitors. 00:31:47.156 --> 00:31:49.946 So it's a it's a really good way to impress customers. 00:31:49.946 --> 00:31:53.226 But naturally we have this entire portal and ultimately it's a tool 00:31:53.226 --> 00:31:55.006 that creates efficiency for our team. 00:31:55.006 --> 00:31:58.236 So, for example, you know, monitoring. 00:31:58.586 --> 00:32:02.026 You know, tens of thousands of websites, you know, for, for, for reliability and 00:32:02.026 --> 00:32:05.976 responsiveness and security and so forth, sounds like a pretty daunting task. 00:32:05.976 --> 00:32:10.896 And to my knowledge, no other host does that, but if you create a solution that 00:32:10.906 --> 00:32:14.376 ultimately empowers the admins who are, who are, who are leveraging it and, 00:32:14.376 --> 00:32:18.916 and creates efficiency, you can really scale service in a way that maybe you 00:32:18.916 --> 00:32:23.016 hadn't previously thought of, really create, you know, fixing the issue 00:32:23.016 --> 00:32:27.211 before it becomes, So to speak, and that's something that we're very good at. 00:32:27.431 --> 00:32:28.761 I think AI can help with that. 00:32:28.791 --> 00:32:35.901 I think we can look at our literally hundreds of thousands of closed solution 00:32:35.981 --> 00:32:43.311 tickets, pull from that, trends and traits and commonalities and try to find ways to 00:32:43.311 --> 00:32:45.631 just be better from a proactive approach. 00:32:45.991 --> 00:32:48.391 but in terms of initial outreach, you know, solving problems, you 00:32:48.391 --> 00:32:49.491 know, what can I help you with today? 00:32:49.801 --> 00:32:50.911 you know, is it a domain issue? 00:32:51.061 --> 00:32:54.821 You know, can I get you, you know, that, that type of stuff drives me nuts. 00:32:54.851 --> 00:32:57.551 And, and it would just, you know, regardless of how it might affect the 00:32:57.551 --> 00:33:00.301 bottom line, it would just, it would just abs, it just, It wouldn't fly. 00:33:00.351 --> 00:33:02.361 It just, you know, I don't care what anybody says. 00:33:02.361 --> 00:33:08.451 It's, it's, it's never going to replace sort of a human greeting you, you know, 00:33:08.451 --> 00:33:11.791 even, even if it is ultimately just pleasantries and, and just, just getting 00:33:11.791 --> 00:33:16.831 you to where you would otherwise have gotten through AI, it's still a touch 00:33:16.831 --> 00:33:20.531 point, where, you know, a customer can have a great interaction with a member 00:33:20.531 --> 00:33:24.441 of your team and even at that level, it's, it's, it's just not worth it. 00:33:24.441 --> 00:33:27.811 In my opinion, to, to save the few bucks that, you know, you 00:33:27.811 --> 00:33:28.851 don't need to, if you do it 00:33:28.926 --> 00:33:32.736 matt: Human interaction will be the next premium people pay for for 00:33:33.081 --> 00:33:36.551 scott: Yeah, well, that's, it's going and it's, it's the, the, the 00:33:36.551 --> 00:33:38.341 service gap is only growing, right? 00:33:38.361 --> 00:33:43.211 Like, you know, it's only been, you know, you can only exist on the tailwinds of 00:33:43.211 --> 00:33:45.661 WordPress growth for so long, right? 00:33:45.661 --> 00:33:49.271 You know, WordPress has been accelerating up into the right for, for so long. 00:33:49.821 --> 00:33:53.291 still, you know, still growing nowhere near where it had been. 00:33:53.561 --> 00:33:57.871 How as a host, are you going to position yourself, you know, into 00:33:57.871 --> 00:34:01.681 the next phase of, you know, what the WordPress ecosystem looks like? 00:34:02.021 --> 00:34:07.416 And certainly, Detracting from your support team, you know, there's, there's, 00:34:07.446 --> 00:34:11.126 you know, there's been, you know, just, just speaking plainly, there's, 00:34:11.146 --> 00:34:12.486 there's been significant layoffs. 00:34:12.486 --> 00:34:16.226 There's been significant, you know, detraction on from R and D, you know, 00:34:16.226 --> 00:34:17.546 in some of these larger agencies. 00:34:17.546 --> 00:34:21.406 And it's, you're thinking to yourself, like, You know, although the bottom 00:34:21.406 --> 00:34:25.276 line has to make sense at a certain level, on the same token, I feel like 00:34:25.276 --> 00:34:27.666 people are missing the button here. 00:34:27.666 --> 00:34:30.986 Like what, what really gets people excited and what people 00:34:30.986 --> 00:34:32.816 are really lacking is, is service. 00:34:32.816 --> 00:34:35.316 And I think, you know, taking away from those things just, 00:34:35.336 --> 00:34:36.356 just doesn't make any sense. 00:34:36.366 --> 00:34:39.276 So existing on the tailwinds of WordPress and sort of just, just being 00:34:39.276 --> 00:34:42.696 a host that whether it be race to the bottom or just sort of being in that 00:34:42.696 --> 00:34:44.436 space, just right time, right place. 00:34:44.896 --> 00:34:45.746 I think is no more. 00:34:45.746 --> 00:34:47.346 I think you have to provide actual value. 00:34:47.656 --> 00:34:51.616 And I think the best way to provide value is, is to do so through service. 00:34:51.616 --> 00:34:52.586 Just, just hands down. 00:34:52.596 --> 00:34:54.706 And that, that service translates to performance, translates to 00:34:54.706 --> 00:34:58.256 security, translate to scalability, reliability, translates to all that. 00:34:58.586 --> 00:34:58.926 So. 00:35:00.076 --> 00:35:04.326 matt: Yeah, I'm a big believer that we're going to see You know, I, I think 00:35:05.266 --> 00:35:10.366 over the last few years, especially since the release of Gutenberg and 00:35:10.366 --> 00:35:14.296 the block editor going into WordPress core and site editor and all that 00:35:14.296 --> 00:35:17.956 stuff, you know, I think we had that dip where a lot of people freaked out. 00:35:18.486 --> 00:35:19.936 Like, this is not for me anymore. 00:35:20.286 --> 00:35:22.676 you know, developers, like the folks that, You know, we're champions 00:35:22.676 --> 00:35:24.406 of WordPress, a decade ago. 00:35:24.766 --> 00:35:25.936 we're just like, ah, it's not for me. 00:35:25.936 --> 00:35:27.306 I don't, I want, I don't want to do this anymore. 00:35:27.316 --> 00:35:29.176 And they sort of skipped town for a little bit. 00:35:29.206 --> 00:35:30.496 And of course it was a challenge. 00:35:30.496 --> 00:35:31.436 Rocky road, right? 00:35:31.436 --> 00:35:34.226 When the Brock, when the block editor was going into, into core. 00:35:34.536 --> 00:35:38.426 Anyway, all of that is to say is I think we saw ourselves a little dip in 00:35:38.426 --> 00:35:43.376 terms of excitement of WordPress and you know, people just being excited 00:35:43.376 --> 00:35:45.556 and providing services for it to now. 00:35:45.866 --> 00:35:47.786 Services coming back again, right? 00:35:47.786 --> 00:35:51.376 So if you're a freelancer or an agency, I've seen it. 00:35:51.376 --> 00:35:55.206 I mean, I've heard from people who are like, I gave up four years ago, five 00:35:55.206 --> 00:35:59.346 years ago, and now I'm back because the other tool I was using just, it 00:35:59.346 --> 00:36:00.926 just, I just kept hitting the wall. 00:36:00.926 --> 00:36:01.966 I couldn't customize it. 00:36:01.966 --> 00:36:03.046 I couldn't get themes for it. 00:36:03.046 --> 00:36:06.646 I certainly couldn't get plugins like I could get for WordPress, but at the end of 00:36:06.646 --> 00:36:10.606 the day, there also wasn't any community around a lot of these other either closed 00:36:10.606 --> 00:36:15.516 sourced platforms, or if they were open source, they were just far too small. 00:36:15.886 --> 00:36:17.756 Where you just found yourself sitting in the room by yourself. 00:36:18.016 --> 00:36:19.896 So you're just like, I'm going back to WordPress. 00:36:20.216 --> 00:36:23.466 I think we're going to have this rise, of services again for the 00:36:23.676 --> 00:36:26.506 freelancer, creative, boutique agency. 00:36:27.016 --> 00:36:30.576 And if that's you listening to this podcast, let me 00:36:30.576 --> 00:36:31.286 know if you think I'm right. 00:36:31.286 --> 00:36:33.821 But number two, work with, another creator. 00:36:34.321 --> 00:36:39.601 Brand like big scoots who also appreciates that human connection, right? 00:36:39.601 --> 00:36:41.781 Because the better things can happen. 00:36:41.801 --> 00:36:44.111 It doesn't have, you don't have to start your agency or your service 00:36:44.281 --> 00:36:48.511 and look for the most lowest price for hosting because you're afraid to 00:36:48.511 --> 00:36:50.311 put out the money or whatever it is. 00:36:50.591 --> 00:36:52.461 You work with people, build up a relationship. 00:36:52.461 --> 00:36:56.141 And I think that relationship, that human thing is going to be oh 00:36:56.141 --> 00:36:59.301 so important for the next decade. 00:36:59.571 --> 00:37:02.861 If we get it that far, the next decade will be very important for 00:37:02.861 --> 00:37:04.461 us to, to formulate that stuff. 00:37:05.606 --> 00:37:10.256 scott: Yeah, value and ultimately the perception of it is, is really key in 00:37:10.256 --> 00:37:12.166 our space more than it's ever been. 00:37:12.176 --> 00:37:14.506 And yeah, if you're, if you're a developer, if you're an agency, 00:37:14.526 --> 00:37:17.916 new or old, I think you're always struggling ways, struggling for ways 00:37:17.926 --> 00:37:19.286 to provide as much value as possible. 00:37:19.506 --> 00:37:21.386 And that goes, goes for everybody, ourselves included. 00:37:22.876 --> 00:37:26.336 If you, if you think about a WordPress site owner, whether they be brand new 00:37:26.336 --> 00:37:30.586 to WordPress or an established agency or business, they all lack the same 00:37:30.586 --> 00:37:32.346 thing, which is some level of service. 00:37:32.346 --> 00:37:35.776 And I would say that's the case for basically every type of service in 00:37:35.776 --> 00:37:37.416 the, in the WordPress ecosystem. 00:37:37.416 --> 00:37:41.306 So whether it be hosting, whether it be, you know, design development, 00:37:41.646 --> 00:37:42.396 it really doesn't matter. 00:37:42.396 --> 00:37:44.226 There's always a lacking of service. 00:37:44.226 --> 00:37:49.196 So, you know, if you're an individual who's willing To look and find value 00:37:49.296 --> 00:37:52.736 in as many places as possible and then provide those to your, your clients or 00:37:52.766 --> 00:37:55.346 your end users, you're, you're always going to win because there's always 00:37:55.346 --> 00:37:57.716 people running in the other direction as businesses, you know, trying to 00:37:57.716 --> 00:38:01.086 cut the bottom line, trying to be more profitable, trying to do things in 00:38:01.086 --> 00:38:02.646 my personal opinion, the wrong way. 00:38:02.956 --> 00:38:03.326 we've. 00:38:04.301 --> 00:38:06.251 You know, we set out, you know, I, it's kind of funny. 00:38:06.251 --> 00:38:10.461 We, we had some, some words up on our, you know, a recent blog post and it was 00:38:10.461 --> 00:38:14.021 like a screenshot from our first, from our first website ever, and he was, you 00:38:14.021 --> 00:38:16.531 know, a little cartoon photo of, of me. 00:38:16.541 --> 00:38:18.591 And I was saying something along the lines of, you know, service 00:38:18.591 --> 00:38:20.051 first, always, no matter what. 00:38:20.671 --> 00:38:23.921 And, you know, we just kind of been preaching the same thing ever since. 00:38:24.141 --> 00:38:27.441 as I had said, unfortunately, we got a little lucky with, finding the right 00:38:27.441 --> 00:38:30.611 people at the right time, but we were also able to build, you know, this, 00:38:30.651 --> 00:38:34.201 this amazing platform and, and really dial in infrastructure and network 00:38:34.201 --> 00:38:35.611 and, and service the level we have. 00:38:35.631 --> 00:38:39.581 But, ultimately I think people are looking for service. 00:38:39.611 --> 00:38:40.721 They're looking for value. 00:38:41.261 --> 00:38:45.351 And there's, there's a lot, there's, there's lots of ways to find that and, 00:38:45.351 --> 00:38:48.221 and, and, and, and give it to folks, it's just a matter of, you know, 00:38:48.221 --> 00:38:51.501 maybe, maybe some extra effort and, and, and looking under a few rocks 00:38:51.561 --> 00:38:52.661 you might not have looked at before. 00:38:54.571 --> 00:38:55.201 matt: BigScoots. 00:38:55.201 --> 00:38:55.501 com. 00:38:55.511 --> 00:38:57.091 Scott, thanks for hanging out today. 00:38:57.111 --> 00:38:59.991 Anywhere else folks can go to say thanks for doing the interview today? 00:39:01.496 --> 00:39:02.776 scott: Yeah, I mean, just our socials. 00:39:02.776 --> 00:39:04.946 I mean, we love interacting with everybody out there too. 00:39:05.006 --> 00:39:06.886 also, any upcoming WordCamp. 00:39:07.176 --> 00:39:11.266 I believe we're going to be at WordCamp, you, I think we're going to WordCamp USA. 00:39:11.526 --> 00:39:14.496 WordCamp Phoenix was our last one, but, if you want to keep up to date 00:39:14.496 --> 00:39:17.016 on our socials and meet us in person, we're always eager to, to catch 00:39:17.016 --> 00:39:18.476 up and see what everybody's up to. 00:39:19.801 --> 00:39:22.781 matt: Scott, you're telling me, Scott, you're a CEO without a newsletter 00:39:22.781 --> 00:39:24.551 telling people how to run their business? 00:39:24.621 --> 00:39:25.131 Come on. 00:39:25.456 --> 00:39:26.296 scott: That's true. 00:39:26.316 --> 00:39:29.056 You know, it's, it's, it is one of those things that we've kind of lacked 00:39:29.056 --> 00:39:30.856 on, which, I'm kind of happy to have. 00:39:30.916 --> 00:39:34.666 it's, it's nice to, it's nice to kind of just be behind the scenes and, 00:39:34.666 --> 00:39:37.296 and just kind of keep the machine running, from a marketing perspective. 00:39:37.336 --> 00:39:39.706 But, yeah, no, I, I, I'm afraid not. 00:39:39.736 --> 00:39:40.306 I'm afraid not. 00:39:40.306 --> 00:39:43.156 If you do sign up with BigScoots, if you do make the decision, you're not going 00:39:43.156 --> 00:39:44.106 to get a whole lot of mail from us. 00:39:44.106 --> 00:39:44.446 So 00:39:44.731 --> 00:39:44.981 matt: Yeah. 00:39:46.691 --> 00:39:47.171 Awesome stuff. 00:39:47.171 --> 00:39:47.641 BigScoots. 00:39:47.641 --> 00:39:47.821 com. 00:39:47.821 --> 00:39:48.891 Scott, thanks for hanging out today. 00:39:49.496 --> 00:39:49.776 scott: yeah. 00:39:49.776 --> 00:39:50.276 Thanks so much. 00:39:50.286 --> 00:39:50.826 Appreciate it.