[00:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there, and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number 442, entitled Matt Cromwell on preparing WordPress products for a changing demographic and AI revolution. It was published on Thursday, the 22nd of October, 2025.
I'll be joined by Matt in a moment, but first of all, introducing myself, I'm Nathan Wrigley and we have a few bits of housekeeping before we begin.
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Okay, what have we got for you today? Well, I'm talking today with Matt Cromwell.
Matt's got a really long history in the WordPress space. So for example, things like Give WP. He's currently working for Stellar, and he's got an intuition that in the future people who have products in the WordPress space are going to have to do things a little bit differently.
We are really focusing on an article that he wrote in the recent past, links will be in the show notes, and in there he really mentions how the younger generation are going to have different expectations for what your plugin ought to be doing out of the box. Design is an important part of this whole thing, and also partnering up with people who can do things that you may not be able to do to make sure that your product is as well-rounded as possible the day it is launched.
We also mention his podcast quite a lot. We get into having jokes around that, so hopefully you'll enjoy that as well. And it's all coming up next and I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by Matt Cromwell.
Hello, Matt.
[00:04:50] Matt Cromwell: Hey folks
[00:04:52] Nathan Wrigley: Nice to, nice to have you with us. Now, Matt is going to say the name of his podcast at least 20 times during this episode, so completely out of context. Just say it straight away.
[00:05:03] Matt Cromwell: randomly, folks should care about WP Product
[00:05:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Okay. There's one we hope to get 19 more mentions in before the end of this episode. Go check it out. Go Google WP. Product talk, or better yet, what's the URL.
[00:05:17] Matt Cromwell: WP product talk.
[00:05:18] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so stop this episode. Go and listen to that. And I could subscribe and all of those kind of things, but we, I'm sure we'll mention it at various points.
The reason that I'm having this conversation with, Matt, though, is that just a few days ago, I caught site of an article that he'd written a. And honestly Matt, I'm not just saying this because you are on the call. A lot of stuff I read it goes in one ear, out the other ear a bit, but yours actually struck me quite hard actually because there, there's a little bit of, I, I guess you could call it fear in there's a little bit of concern about the future of WordPress and products and interfaces and things like that, but also a note of optimism at the end.
And it was done in such a way, beautifully written, beautiful website. And, Don, in such a way that it really captured my attention. So I've got you on the podcast today to talk about it. The, notes that I provide with this podcast episode. It'll have a link, but go Google this. the piece is called My Best Advice for WordPress Product Businesses in 2026 and Beyond.
We're gonna be talking about that article. Before we crack into that, though, Matt, if somebody's not heard of you for one reason or another, do you wanna just lay out your potted bio quickly?
[00:06:30] Matt Cromwell: yeah. I am co-founder of Give wp, which was acquired by LiquidWeb, where I now work, and have been, leading the customer experience department. My role is recently evolving a bit and I'm now, heading up our growth, department for, all of the stellar products. and, I like to talk about the.
Plugin ecosystem. It's what I'm passionate about. and it was the dead center of my heart and my, passion and, the audience for this article in particular. that's why I talk about it all the time at WP Product
[00:07:09] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, there's two. We won't keep track, but it's funny. So let's keep that joke going throughout this episode. Are you ju just on that point, right? So I know that you've got a lot of heritage with WordPress. In fact, when I began using WordPress, probably in 20. 15, something like that. I think you were already an established voice, give was al already out there at least I think it was.
are you, as excited about things like plugins and what have you as, you were back then? Does it still keep the same interest or do you have to wait yourself up and slap yourself around in the morning and, Fein enthusiasm that's, maybe asking you to be a little bit more honest than you are willing to be.
I don't know.
[00:07:50] Matt Cromwell: It's a good one. I will say that my. My excitement around this general space has evolved in different ways over time. I can think early days ab absolutely. I was excited about being a builder. I love to build something. I love that I was solving real world problems for nonprofit organizations. that was what turned me on the most all the time.
over time it started to become more of. Like the business of, product and, understanding how to do this, successfully and sustainably. building out a team that loves what they do and loves working for you and wants to stick around. All that became more my passion. but I would say over the last couple years it's really shifted pretty more directly towards the whole.
WordPress plugin ecosystem. that's now where I'm like, I, this, it's an amazing space. I love it. I love the people that are investing in this space. I love the types of businesses they're building. I love the creativity and the, interest that they garner. and it, I don't know, it's great. It, keeps me very excited.
It keeps me motivated all the time.
[00:09:03] Nathan Wrigley: It's really curious 'cause you've got such a different take on it to me. So when I began using. WordPress, like I say, 2015, something like that, to, to me, WordPress plugins were a solution. I wasn't building them in the same way that you were. So we've got a different, our, paths were different at that point.
I was, hoping to discover already built things so that I could then implement them and then pass them onto clients and what have you. But I've never, widened my thought process in the way that you have, because it sounds more like in the last. Two years, 24 months, 48 months or whatever.
From what you just said, it sounds like you are, more having a, I don't know, a 10,000 mile high view of the plugin ecosystem, so not necessarily concerned so much about an individual plugin, ones that you own, ones that you built more about the whole ecosystem and how it all works out.
Have I paraphrased that about right?
[00:09:57] Matt Cromwell: That's, exactly it. That's, it, goes along with my trajectory as well, like being a, an individual plugin contributor and, owner and pushing, give as much as I possibly can coming into Stellar wp then where, my. Partner, Devin and I, we started, being responsible for more products, and overseeing more of how they work.
And so it wasn't just give anymore. I, love my give team to death and I'm biased. It's like they're my children and the rest are like cousins, or nieces and nephews. and I, but I, getting to understand the events calendar, such a wild and different, team and, different, ecosystem in general.
Taught me a ton about, challenging my own biases and my own thoughts about, product development and things like that. that's started getting me in there. But then it also was seriously, every time I go to a Word camp, I meet somebody new who's built something that I'd never heard of before. and as I started building out WP Product Talk, just had so many conversations with folks that I never would've talked with before, and learned so much from them.
Like in early days in the WordPress plugin space, there was like a handful of folks who were really innovating and really doing really fascinating and significant things. But now There's so many, I probably was naive and arrogant at the same time to think that I understood the space like five or six years ago or whatnot.
now I'm like, oh my gosh, this space is huge, way larger than I am, way more innovative than I could ever be. I have a ton to learn from this space. So it's, Yeah. At this stage I'm trying to have a good grasp of what's going on at scale, across the ecosystem in a way that I think a lot of other big SaaS platforms, like the Shopify, ecosystem or, the Squarespace.
it's, a little bit different there, but like each of these, they have to be thinking about the whole entire. Ecosystem of what they're building and the communities that are being grown in that environment. and there's definitely folks who are, paying attention to that as well. I think Courtney Robinson does a really great job on that front.
Michelle Ette does herself. She's like the glue of this, ecosystem in many ways. so there are folks who, do it, but from a more. Freemium business perspective like Katie, Keith and I are the ones who are out there all the time, trying to talk about it as much as we can.
[00:12:33] Nathan Wrigley: So we ended up there having a, more extended bio, if you like, which is really nice. We got to learn a little bit more about you and this, wider approach that you've taken. couple of follow up questions before we get stuck into the article. Firstly are you moving? is there some kind of agenda that you've got here?
And again, forgive me if I'm asking questions that you're not unwilling to answer are, you purposefully moving in this direction? in other words, are you deliberately finding out more about different plugins and exploring the ecosystem and finding out that. Data and the stats and all of this stuff.
Are you doing it with an end goal in mind? Maybe that's to grow your own products. Maybe it's more to be, I don't know, a champion of the WordPress plugin ecosystem to be a source of knowledge around there. So it's a kind of peculiar question, but hopefully you understood what I meant.
[00:13:24] Matt Cromwell: there's a lot of ways I could answer that. I think the easiest way to answer it is. Yes, of course. I do all the things that I do with intention and on purpose. and at the moment I do them, with the intent and purpose to be an expert at what I do. I, love my role, that I've had at Stellar, and I feel like what I do and the way that I contribute to my teams is richly enhanced.
By the knowledge and insight I gained from other, products and other people that I talk within the ecosystem. And I want, separately from my role and separately from what I do, I want to foster. that spirit in WordPress as much as possible, as much as I am capable of, fostering it, there is, we've had a, the benefit that WordPress has always been a very community driven ecosystem in general, and.
nobody even uses the word frenemies, which I think they could and should in some ways. because like we look at each other, we don't even say the word competitor, like barely, these are people who sell products that, that they could be buying from me, but they buy from him instead.
and that's fine. It's a big ecosystem. It's a big marketplace that these are the words that we say. but that. Spirit and attitude has, lessened, over the years a bit. There's definitely a lot more head-to-head competitors than there used to be. and I keep saying like our competition is not within the WordPress ecosystem.
The competition is definitely outside of the WordPress ecosystem, so the more that we all can get along and keep. like partnering and, working with each other, the better it is for WordPress. and, and we keep winning against the SaaS, competitors essentially.
[00:15:26] Nathan Wrigley: So a very optimistic way you've painted WordPress there. However, it's not all optimism, because turning our attention to the article, I'll just give you the title again. It's my best advice for WordPress, product businesses in 2026 and beyond. I don't really wanna paraphrase this because it's not.
Obviously going to cut the mustard and the target will probably be missed by me. But you, set up a problem at the beginning and then go into kind of tackle ways, possible ways of, moving past it. But you are concerned, I think, about the future of WordPress, the future of plugins.
AI creeps into it. Do you just wanna lay out briefly what the, sort of central thrust of the beginning of the article is?
[00:16:11] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, there, in my conversations in general, in the product space, there is a lot of anxiety at the moment, about the future. I heard. A lot of folks even say within five years, there might not even be websites anymore.
[00:16:28] Nathan Wrigley: I've heard this. Yep.
[00:16:30] Matt Cromwell: The way, in which the technology is evolving and shaping and things like that.
I think those are all valid concerns. and there's reasons why folks have anxiety, overall. and I wanted to write something that, would be a little bit of a guiding star for the future, regardless of the anxiety and things like that. I wanted To, to pitch this as we don't know exactly what the future, has in store for us in general.
but, there is a way forward, and I think, identifying the, problem, the core problem in WordPress or WordPress plugins in general is that we tend to. Focus on, the developer experience, building something out, so that folks can configure a whole bunch of settings to get a result that they don't see until they go to the front end of their website.
That's just been the WordPress way for a long time. and. There is no future. If you're gonna keep, doing that. I'm optimistic about a lot of things, but if your plan is to keep building a bunch of settings, panels to hopefully get customers to have success like that, future is ending very quickly.
and so I, that, that was part of the problem I wanted to really focus on and, lay the groundwork for the rest of the article.
[00:17:53] Nathan Wrigley: So I guess the, that's always been the way since I've been using WordPress is once you've launched a product, you, do an MVP, you launch it, and then if you've got enough success to keep going, your. Your roadmap from that moment on is basically support, I guess that's part of the product from that moment on, but also a continual cycle of adding features and mentioning the features in blog posts and online and in social media and what have you.
But you just keep adding features and more features because, it's, difficult to communicate the value. Unless there's extra stuff being added in, but you are, making the point that maybe that's not the way forward. Now, is that, are you, meaning you shouldn't be adding features in the sense that there should be no more features?
Or is it the way that they're being added in, like shipping them in settings, panels in the backend where there's a bunch of tick boxes that's out of date? I'm just trying to clarify that a little
[00:18:54] Matt Cromwell: More the second for sure. There's there, you know it, when you talk to product marketers, they'll say, you shouldn't really talk about features all that much. You should talk about benefits. and I'm in that mindset as well. we should be very benefits oriented, not feature oriented, benefits happen because we built out features in our.
Product in one way or another. but the, it's about how you do them. It's about not, necessarily whether you're building out the product more and more, making it competitive against your competitors, or whether you're having parody against SaaS applications or things like that, that, that kind of always, that's product building 1 0 1.
You have to do those things in order to maintain and keep going into the future, but it's more about. How those are implemented. If, it's like, folks just need to be able to change this thing with a knob or a toggle or a, any of these types of things, we gave them the abilities. I hear it sometimes in this Product owner, customer antagonism kind of way. We gave them this last time, we gave them this, this other time we, gave them that setting. Now they should be able to do these things. just because you put something into the product doesn't mean people know how to use it or, just 'cause it's there doesn't mean they know what to expect once they toggle it on.
so it's more about the way in which we roll those features out to users. In a way that makes sense, that they don't have to think about it. That it's just oh, this is exactly what I was looking for, and now I have the results that I wanted.
[00:20:29] Nathan Wrigley: So this, is not born out of the, some kind of stasis. Let me describe what I mean. So in your article, Europe pains to point out that it's. It's not like that's inadequate given the state of the audience that we've got at the moment. It's more that the, sand is shifting with the audience.
The people who are in the future going to be coming to WordPress have got different expectations because, to, be honest with you, Matt, I, think I am, I'm, you and I probably can cope with the UI of tick boxes and things like that 'cause we're just, we know how all that works and we're fairly used to it.
But if you were to take the example of my teenage kids. They're being born in an era where, my goodness, ev e ev, their entire lives are conducted through this mobile phone interface, super slick, super easy to use. You go and download something from the App Store or Google Play Store, and these in, some cases, these platforms with billions of dollars behind them.
you open the app for the first time and it's instantaneously obvious what you've got to do to get. From it, what they're intending you to get from it. you don't have to go in some magic setting screen, configure things. you just slide through the process that the app has designed for you.
So it's, that target audience of, younger people. I guess that's one thing. And the second thing that you're at pains to point out is these, this same audience are also increasingly gonna be familiar with. artificial intelligence, ai, and so this capacity to communicate with a, website, an app, whatever it may be, in a way that we are not used to, in the last 20 years of us using WordPress, if you wanted to change something, you needed to tick a box or you needed to type something in a field and then press save, now you can just communicate.
Either through a chat interface or who knows where that will go in the future. So I just wanted to lay that groundwork as well. And maybe that sets you off a bit. So ai, younger people, mobile phones, that kind of thing.
[00:22:34] Matt Cromwell: Hundred percent the the how we built this out has to visually. Makes sense to the user. they need to be able to look at it and just say, I know exactly what I need to do now. and it, I'm a support guy. I, love support, I love docs. I love chatting with customers and learning from them.
but I, don't want them to have to come to me to figure out the basics of the product. And that's where the WordPress plugin ecosystem. Often is stuck in is that so much of the support they get is needless. because it's just like, how do I use your product? That's like the, actual nature of the support ticket.
It's not oh, I'm trying to do something really weird and different with your product that it's not intended to do. It's really just like. How do I use your product? I tried to use your product and it didn't work. I did exactly what it says it's supposed to do, and it broke my website. Like it, all of these types of, support tickets are what folks are used to getting.
I say all the time that when you get those tickets, it's time to change something. it, try to prevent those kinds of tickets from coming in the future. And the best way to prevent them is with the interface. not in terms of a settings interface, but with how people interact with your product in the first place.
are you showing them the path to success physically? are, you illustrating it, visually for them? so they, they don't have to think, they don't, have to go to your online docs. They don't have to chat with your chat bot. they just look at it and know what's next. Like you were saying with your kids, that's a hundred percent, they're all expecting that kind of interface now.
[00:24:20] Nathan Wrigley: I suppose a real world example. So really divorce from the internet basically is ikea. So I dunno if you've ever been to an IKEA store and come home with something. In the olden days, we used to have stores that did products similar to Ikea, but you'd get it home and you'd on. Unpack it, and then you'd have this really complicated manual with like loads of written words.
first of all, do this and then take the screwdriver and y dah, whatever. And then, the first time I opened up an IKEA package, there was like this booklet with really basic drawings of a, a caricature human being, holding a screwdriver. And that's drawing one, And then second drawing is, there's all the bits. What I'm trying to say is. it, it communicates complexity in a really simple way and it does it in a magnificent way. So I, presume an, awful lot of thought went into that. So I dunno if that's a, useful description of what you're talking about.
complexity through simplicity. I know that sounds trite, but something along those lines.
[00:25:26] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, it's a fascinating analogy, to what I'm trying to say for sure. I, there's a, couple different documentaries about the way that IKEA approached that whole thing, and I, do remember hearing an interview where they talked very explicitly about that. They knew that. Their products were going to be shipped internationally.
just in Europe alone, 27 different languages and whatnot. they're like, we don't wanna spend the time, translating our manual into 27 different languages Now. It's hundreds of different languages. so we'll use the universal language of imagery, stick figures.
[00:26:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:26:05] Matt Cromwell: I think that was.
Brilliant. and, we still struggle to get through an IKEA build without, some frustration and things. but it's hard to think of a way to make it even simpler than what IKEA has accomplished.
[00:26:20] Nathan Wrigley: But, I guess the argument for you though, is firstly. The audience of the future is going to have the expectation of simplicity, so let's just take that as red and move forward from there. the example that you give in your, in your blog post of a WordPress company that did this successfully was Elementor.
I know. There's gonna be a lot of people out there. As soon as I say that word, they're gonna think, what? That's super complicated. loads of lo loads of menus hidden behind the scenes. But I think what you are trying to say is that as soon as you've got the interface loaded, like you, you download element, or you install it, you activate it, you go to create a page, and you click the elemental bottom.
From that moment on, you really have to try hard not to understand what the heck's going on. There's just a bunch of buttons, you drag things in. Oh. Look, stuff happened and it's immediately obvious what's going on. Is that Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:15] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, I sometimes I think about it like if it, or we could take the furniture analogy further if I was, asked to build, an IKEA bookshelf, but I had to build it. a wall between me and the bookshelf itself, where I was like telling somebody else, okay, now put the thing in. I like, I'm reading the manual and they're building it.
that's the WordPress experience that Elementor was trying to solve. they're like, you don't need a wall between you and the object. Just build the shelf with your hands. Like actually do that. So when you walk into elementary, you just start building a page. You see a page and it's empty at the moment, it's a page and you know that you can grab stuff and build something.
And when you grab it and you put it in there, now you see it and you're like, I've actually started doing something that I didn't know that I could do. and so let me do more of it. And yes, as you do more of it, the complexity of what you wanted to do. Want to do grows, but so does your interest in the product.
so does your interest in the outcome of what you're doing. and so you're more invested, and, you never feel like suddenly now I'm fighting with this tool. You more feel like this tool's helping me do something that I didn't know I was capable of doing. and that's what we're looking for.
That's the, beauty of what Elementor did. Al already years ago. And and what, that's a big reason why I cite, in that section on Elementor, I, cite Josta Fox article that I think not enough folks pay attention to. Honestly, it's a great, really intelligent article that says that partly, part of the reason why WordPress today is successful and has the adoption it has.
It's because of Elementor. Like it is a huge driver of WordPress adoption. No matter what you think about the product, no matter what you think about the way it's a, visual page builder or whatever, it has driven WordPress adoption in a way that no other product has. No other product has done that, and I'm saying yeah, a hundred percent.
Why? Because they gave, they took the wall away. They let you build the page with your hands instead of a settings panel that then does something on the front end. they did the user experience thing and they did it really well.
[00:29:35] Nathan Wrigley: I guess part of the article, you, essentially promote the use of the hiring of URUX. People, who are, who have this in their blood, have this as a skill. In other words, if you're a plugin developer, that in the future is no longer like an optional extra. It looking nice is a, it's a 1 0 1, it's defacto durga.
You, you don't launch without it. But, I guess some things are gonna be easier to solve than others, depending on the kind of thing that you're trying to tackle. But nevertheless, maybe that's the bit that you are trying to encourage people to get into is at least the thought process of, okay, before you build it.
Don't just make it a bunch of settings, boxes. Don't just make it a bunch of tick boxes and, complicated stuff in the backend and short codes. This, and, snippets here and whatever there make it. So make it a part of the building, of the plugin, the theme, whatever it may be, so that you've thought about this, onboarding for want of a better word, right at the beginning and make that a core part of what you do.
[00:30:43] Matt Cromwell: Hundred percent. I, again, I went into these recommendations with the problems, in mind that I've seen in the WordPress space for a super long time. we, WordPress. Products are what they are because developers, wanted to solve a problem and they, were like, ah, I'm just gonna build it myself.
And so they build it themselves and they build something that's functional, but crappy. that's how, that's the definition of a WordPress MCP, the m excuse me. MVP, minimal
[00:31:19] Nathan Wrigley: MVP.
[00:31:21] Matt Cromwell: so many different acronyms now.
[00:31:23] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
Too.
[00:31:24] Matt Cromwell: is really even messing up my
[00:31:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:31:27] Matt Cromwell: And that's the definition of a WordPress.
MVP is a developer who solves a problem in a really crappy way, but functional way. but what makes a product work and fly is, really good marketing and really good design. And those two things have been. Absent in the WordPress space, except for in some of these highly successful products like Elementor.
Elementor came out so good with marketing and market and they product, they marketed their products in ways nobody did before. divvy was very, similar. They had really great marketing in so many different ways. WP Engine, also huge company. highly successful regardless of. All kinds of drama and whatnot.
But they, have great marketers. they work really hard on their UI and their design. these are things that developers and especially developer, founders. Are not good at, they're just not good at them. And so it, the quicker that a product, owner can recognize what they're good at and what they're not good at, and partner up on the things that they're not good at, the quicker their product will be successful.
that's the big problem that I. Another of the big problems in the article that I'm, that I was going into, you're a great developer. You probably even have a little bit of a business mind, good marketing when you see it, but that doesn't mean you know how to create good marketing.
good design when you see it. But that doesn't mean you know how to create good design. find the people that do know how to do those things and partner up.
[00:33:02] Nathan Wrigley: So partnerships. Yeah, that's a really interesting, okay, so yeah, lots of mutual back robbing, if So if you are, and let's be honest. Marketing is a whole thing. Like you might think that you are good at marketing, but if that's not really your thing, it's quite likely that you've got an overblown impression of what your marketing capabilities are.
Equally, if you are a developer, there's a few out there who are developers and they're also brilliant designers, but. Not typically. I'm gonna tell you some, some little stories that I don't often share, but I'll put this out there. I get quite a lot of email, Matt, from companies, especially in the run up to Black Friday, who, want to just come on the podcast or something like that.
And so we get into this email exchange backwards, and forwards. And it, breaks my heart actually the amount of times I, so they talk about the product, they tell me its name, they describe what it. Does, and I think that's amazing. And then they send me the link to the landing page and, it's.
Basically heartbreaking because you have the impression that they've got this fully fleshed out product, but you can immediately see that that cog is missing, that piece of the jigsaw is totally missing. They've not done the marketing bit. The language is wrong. the website is terrible. and what, and at that point, you have to step away because you really, to your core that it's not gonna be successful no matter how good the product.
maybe there's a few exceptions, but typically it won't be successful because of the poor marketing and because of the poor design. Now, I've probably put my foot in my mouth a little bit there, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.
[00:34:44] Matt Cromwell: do, I that I, also get a lot of email for my podcast, WP Product
[00:34:49] Nathan Wrigley: three. We've only done three. Oh, it's not good enough. We'll keep. We'll do better.
[00:34:54] Matt Cromwell: yeah, those emails come in and and they're like, oh, I have a great idea for a topic for WP product talk. And, and here's the pitch. It's about how to use my plugin and I'm like. I, wonder if marketing is not your thing, clearly, you're like, I'm a developer builder. I built something, I'm gonna go do some marketing, and tell people how to use my product.
that's not how you do it, especially if you obviously haven't watched the show because we don't ever. Have any episodes where we talk about how to use a product ever, that's not what we do. and if you are a marketer, you'd know that you would've done your research, you would've tried to make the right pitch to the right person.
[00:35:35] Nathan Wrigley: It's curious. The way that the development cycle works though, is that marketing, the marketing really does, maybe there's the marketing bits where alongside the development of the product, you are, you're doing things like branding and logos and things like that. But the actual, the hard work of getting it from the first version ver, going beta one or something like that into successful.
Plugin. That all happens after the fact, and I get the impression that it's, in many cases it's a solo developer and they've put so much time, so much effort into it that at that point it feels like they're giving too much away. Maybe if they bring on a marketer, Like they've put in two, 300 hours into this thing.
That's sunk time, massive opportunity cost and, then at that point to partner up with somebody and have this revenue share thing that. I imagine that's the stumbling block in many cases. It's just, I've put so much time into it, it's all mine. and that's a, thing that
[00:36:31] Matt Cromwell: all five sales of it. All five sales of it are
[00:36:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, exactly, But what if you but the 200 sales, the 300 sales that the marketer might be able to spin around, but, that is, that's true though. You can feel it. Because we make something, we create things and we own the thing and, it's hard in some cases to let go of it and to realize that giving a, proportion, I don't know, you do a revenue share or you split the company in 50 ways or whatever it may be.
That is, I think. That's the bit that I feel is sometimes missing. They're just so focused on I built it, they will come. That little piece is gonna be hard to, overcome.
[00:37:12] Matt Cromwell: honestly though, Katie, Keith is one of my co-hosts on WP
[00:37:17] Nathan Wrigley: Four Very good.
[00:37:19] Matt Cromwell: there you go. and she and I talk about this often. she gets emails. All the time from folks who want her to run their marketing for their, product business. 'cause she's great at marketing. and they're like willing to give away portions of their business so that she will market their company, product.
and it's not just that it, Folks are often at that stage, they're, willing to partner. because partnering at that stage, at that level, is risk for the partner, for the person coming
[00:37:53] Nathan Wrigley: You are right.
[00:37:54] Matt Cromwell: they have to believe in the product. They have to believe in the future of it because they're not getting paid in the beginning.
you're not gonna, partner up and, immediately get paid unless you're making an investment. And then you probably own a decent portion of that business already. but the folks who, want to share in the. Failures and sharing the success. There's a lot more of 'em out there than you might think.
it's, I, think there's a, ripe space right now for there to be a lot more masterminds, in the WordPress product space, for example. I think there's a good amount of, interest, and appetite for. Angel investors. I think there's a, lot of opportunity for, some sort of incubator that started a lot lower than any of the existing WordPress incubators that are out there right now.
'cause those ones do start at a higher multiple, generally speaking. so it's, there's, opportunity out there and people are willing to do it and I think they should do it more often and they should be more aggressive about looking for partnerships.
[00:39:07] Nathan Wrigley: sounds like these, different areas, so the developers and the marketers and the ui UX experts. They need to collide more often. they're, in, maybe they're in their own little silos and they don't have methods to communicate with each other. They literally don't know where the other one is.
And so we need some spotlight, some forum. to, make those different channels aware so that they can collide and interact and figure out whether, they like each other and like each other's products and what have you. so number five, WP product talk. Do you do things like that over there?
Do you, get those different sides of that equation on, or are you always about the developer, or are sometimes talking to the marketers and what have you as well?
[00:39:52] Matt Cromwell: We have all kinds of folks on the show as guests. and, we're always looking for, different types of, founders. I, talk with a lot of different types of founders like Justin Ferryman from, LearnDash, original founder of LearnDash. He's what I would call marketing founder. He, or sales founder is probably even better.
He really knows how to market really well. He knows how to sell really well. He did not care that much about the development side of things. on purpose. It was like, that's not my strength and that's not where my focus is gonna be. I'm gonna just make pay for that to happen. and, go from there.
And he had a lot of success with it that way. he's, he is more of a marketing founder. Adrian from Groundhog, he is an interesting one too. He's a, he's like a, what I would call a customer success founder. He has a really clear, strong focus on, customer insight and customer feedback, and he takes all of it and he turns it into roadmaps immediately.
and there's not a lot of dev founders who do that at all. dev founders sometimes really have an antagonistic relationship with their customer. unfortunately because they. They are like, I'm gonna build the product the way I think it should be built. And folks can use it that way. And if folks don't like it that way they can go somewhere else.
that's their perspective on things.
[00:41:16] Nathan Wrigley: It, feels as if you are painting a picture though of, optimism. You are, you're fairly sure that if things stay the way they are. We're in for a rocky ride. Maybe a, precipitous decline in the use of WordPress. 'cause as we described, the children that are coming through the young adults that are coming through are not gonna be satisfied with the way things are.
But it does feel like you've got some, you've got a nice bit of scaffolding here to help people through, make it look nice, adopt ai. We could, we haven't really. Dwelled on that. So maybe we can do that in a minute. But, and, communicate with other people who are capable of the things which your business is lacking, be that development or be that marketing or what have you.
optimism is the, is what I'm taking away.
[00:42:02] Matt Cromwell: I think that's what folks want or need right now at the moment because there is a lot of pessimism, for lots of reasons that are, have nothing to do with WordPress in many ways. the, our environment at the moment is really, a bit rocky in general. and, we are gonna.
Keep going in one form or another, no matter what, like we are gonna move forward. this isn't a doomsday Armageddon situation that we're in. It's it's, a new stage. It's a new season of life and, and there has to be a way forward in one way or another. The, focus on user experience in my mind is something that, I don't, want to say the word eternal, but it's like.
You can do any kind of product that you want to do in any kind of environment that you want to build in. If you focus on user experience,
[00:42:55] Nathan Wrigley: Hmm.
[00:42:56] Matt Cromwell: PHP ah. Only in some environments, settings, panels, not always that's not so important. but like focusing on user experience puts you in, the front seat always, going forward, no matter where you're at.
And. That's where I think we can be optimistic is because if we learn that really and do that and have that focus, it can be our North Star regardless of the circumstances that are coming over the next few years.
[00:43:29] Nathan Wrigley: I think we'll put a pin in the AI bit because closing in on 40 minutes, we probably said most of what we wanted to say, but but it feels like it's an ephemeral thing. It's hard to get your hands on this. It's not that you're not painting Matt Cromwell. I have the answers here. You are just highlighting a problem with a few potential pitfalls in the near future if we don't pay attention to them.
But also here's some fairly broad brush strokes for how we might solve it, but particularly focusing on ui ux, partnering up with people who offer expertise in areas that you don't have yourself. And and we'll see how that goes. Yeah. Okay. So I just need to say WP Product Talk 15 times.
[00:44:16] Matt Cromwell: Makes for a really interesting
[00:44:18] Nathan Wrigley: I'll tell you what I'll do is I will create a piece of, AI fade out music, which just says WP product talk over and over again. And, and that will really make people, make people's eyes water. So stay tuned for that. yeah, We stoop to all the lows in this podcast, I'll tell you.
But Matt, thank you for chatting to me today. Where can we find you apart from that podcast, WP Product Talk? That's six.
[00:44:46] Matt Cromwell: wps, I'm mostly on X as learn with Mat C. and actually the best place to find me always is connect dot matt cromwell.com that has all of my different socials there.
[00:45:00] Nathan Wrigley: As always, we'll put the bits and pieces in the show notes that come up in this episode. But, Matt Cromwell, thank you so much for chatting to me today. Very, cool. Very intelligent. Love it. Thank you so
[00:45:10] Matt Cromwell: Thank you, Nathan. Appreciate it.
[00:45:12] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that's really nearly it. Almost all I've got time for. However, before we get to the fading in of the cheesy music, I would just like to say thank you to Matt. If you enjoyed that episode, head to WP Build search for episode number 442 and leave us a comment there.
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Okay, here comes some dreadful, cheesy music. I did promise in the podcast that I would throw in a piece of music generated by AI all about WP Product Talk, the podcast, but unfortunately I don't have the licensing. I did make one and I sent it to Matt and it was quite funny actually. But, um, I'm gonna have to rely on something more generic that I do have the rights to otherwise I'm going to get sued, and frankly, I don't need that.
Okay, here it comes, fading it in now. Now you stay safe. Have a good week. Bye-bye for now.
