Breakdown - A Gravity Forms Podcast

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Matt: Have you not done a podcast before?

[00:00:01] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: I've done, A couple episodes of, stuff for the YouTube channel, but I'm still relatively new for it, so I might stumble over my words until I get my cadence down.

[00:00:12] Matt: You are the key master to breakdown

[00:00:14] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: I look at it as, it is now your thing though, it was cool that I, kind of. Did what I did during it, but like, I think what you're doing with breakdown and, and the stories you're gonna be telling are going to be, , taking it in a much more interesting direction.

[00:00:33] Matt: I see breakdown as a shared opportunity for both of us.

[00:00:36] you started it, a video series breakdown. Here I come, I say, well, this is a. Fantastic series that, that was already started. Let's, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Let's bring Dustin back to the spotlight. Right. and I think this is a fantastic way to do it.

[00:00:52] You started breakdown as an interview series yourself, right? You were, I know you interviewed Izzy.

[00:00:58] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: yeah, so it actually didn't start necessarily as an interview series. It, started as just a way to kind of introduce, people interested in, in gravity forms or, or people who are just getting started with their business into these larger concepts like, like, you know, breaking down what a lead even is, what A C R M is and, and all these things that you're just getting started, , you might not know and might need help along the way. And then sort of as those episodes went along, especially when I had the, this conversation with Izzy, it, it felt like a a podcast slash interview format would actually service the series a lot better.

[00:01:38] I think you've come in and, and are gonna like, take it to, its, next level and, and reach its actual potential.

[00:01:45] Matt: As a former. Agency owner, myself, having worked with technical professionals from, you know, whatever, front end designers, backend engineers, a term I would always use when I walked into the room when I was trying to like figure out a project quote a customer was, okay, team, break this down for me. Break it down for me. And then I had literal breakdowns my agency. So I figured, hey, this is like, this is the perfect, branding for this type of journey, this type of learning experience. And I think, You know, being able to, develop this a little bit more and develop breakdown a little bit more.

[00:02:20] I mean, I'm super excited, to do it. And, you know, I think what we're gonna try to do is one, make a great podcast, as great of a podcast can be about gravity forms, about software, about that agency life, education, entertainment, information about what's happening with your favorite, contact form plugin for WordPress and, whatever else.

[00:02:42] That throws at us, you know, in the future.

[00:02:44] We're gonna be here every two weeks. and if you really love the show, smash that like button. There's no like button in podcasting. Not yet. but give us a, a review or just reach out to us and say, Hey, we like breakdown.

[00:02:56] If you like it that much, we're gonna move it up maybe to a, a weekly show. But that's a lot of [00:03:00] work. That's a lot of work. so it might be just every two weeks.

[00:03:05] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: we do a weekly video on, or we post weekly videos on YouTube and, it definitely, can be a lot of work.

[00:03:13] Matt: we're gonna talk about some of those videos, later, in the show. Talk about the video of the week, one of the videos you've been working on. we'll share that with you, the listener,

[00:03:22] something coming down the pipe that the team wants us to chat about. Is, some upcoming nonprofit licenses.

[00:03:30] Don't take my word for it, but I'm hearing somewhere between $129 for three sites, different levels of access. What, what, what do you have, Dustin, behind the scenes that I don't know.

[00:03:39] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: S So the nonprofit license is, as it's stated for meant for nonprofits. It's comes with everything that you would get from an elite license at a heavily discounted price. you have to apply for the nonprofit license, so it's not just something you can just go on and sign up for it

[00:03:58] the team's been looking for a way to like, Deliver a license at a cheaper cost.

[00:04:04] For nonprofits specifically, and this is what we've come up with.

[00:04:08] Matt: there's a ton of nonprofits that obviously use Gravity forms already. Maybe many of them pass through like an agency. An agency built a website for them. They happen to use gravity forms. one of the things that, I dunno, makes WordPress so great, what makes Gravity forms so great is that. Things are getting easier, I hope, for the end user to build sites, , to launch nonprofit websites.

[00:04:31] I'm a mentor at a local startup accelerator. There are a ton of nonprofits that pass through that for like sustainable businesses in our community.

[00:04:39] You might need gravity forms to collect donations. Colle collect recurring donations, and I think that's like step one of, nonprofit is please give us some money so that we can continue this business.

[00:04:51] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: Yeah, and we've actually to, to. Talk a bit on that. Ease of use that you mentioned. 2.7 introduced some highly requested features such as, the template library is now built in. so you can import a template, from the gravity form site if you want, but also when you go to create a new form, you'll be given.

[00:05:11] an array of templates, like a donation form, and you can click that and it'll have everything you need, but you can for, for, to set up donations on your site, but it's also still completely customizable. The other thing, we, that was added in 2.7, that, that, that, was highly requested and, and adds to that ease of use factor is our orbital styling options.

[00:05:34] So you can now, From within, like as you post a, your, your pager or, or your post, you can use the orbital theme to kind of cus to customize how your form is going to look, on the front end.

[00:05:49] Matt: As most people start to transition, hopefully to using, the Gutenberg block editor, Or full site editing and Gutenberg and that combination, the end [00:06:00] user's gonna be much more, exposed to that building experience. And you just wanna change the colors, man.

[00:06:06] Like, you just wanna be in the page and go, you know what? That doesn't look good with the rest of my content on this contact form page. I just wanna change the font, the colors right here, you know, and now you can do it right inside

[00:06:17] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: Yeah. And, and to actually talk for a second on Gutenberg. right now, orbital only. Supports Gutenberg, but in the future, the plan is to open that door wide open to allow orbital to, to, to work with whatever version of WordPress you're running. so we want it to be as, yeah, we want it to be as flexible as possible.

[00:06:40] Matt: Speaking of flexible as possible, do anything with gravity forms from nonprofit to contact form, forms. I had a chance to chat with a fellow named Steven Christ from Homes Corporation. he and his team use Gravity Forms to build, basic contact forms like we just talked about for marketing and lead generation.

[00:06:59] all the way up to him sharing a pretty compelling story about a self-assessment app, that he and his team build, which, he says he couldn't do without gravity forms.

[00:07:11] That was, fantastic from Steven, although it's, it's hashtag form anything. Steven, if you're, if you're listening,

[00:07:17] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: you, you know what I really loved about that was I, I think when you, you first start using gravity forms, it's got a very welcoming, like easy to use interface. But then you have these examples like what, what, Steve was talking about where you can just take it to these really crazy levels and, and really.

[00:07:38] You know, we talk about the hashtag form anything you can do, like anything with gravity forms like, but at the same time, if you are a basic user that just wants to, you know, create a simple contact page or a newsletter signup form, it's a super easy, it's a breeze to do, but you can also extend the power of gravity forms to so many ways.

[00:08:01] And, and I think that that, Steve's story there, really exemplifies that.

[00:08:06] Matt: A hundred percent. you were hinting at the fact, earlier in the show

[00:08:10] you wanted to help people understand like cr M stuff. like, you know, from any, anything soup to nuts of, you have a contact form on your site, people can contact you and maybe now you pipe that to a C R M HubSpot. Is a very popular add-on for us. I heard that, we are somewhere between first and second largest third party integration in their platform. Asterisks. We might have to double check that fact, check that later on. but that's what I heard through the grapevine. We were launching this new ebook, this new partnership with them.

[00:08:39] I recently wrote a piece highlighting my experience with using HubSpot as an agency owner, as a former recovering. Agency owner, on aligning oneself with better software. in other words, if you find more HubSpot customers, generally they might be better customers for your agency. What's your experience with HubSpot [00:09:00] and what you've seen come down the gravity forms, ecosystem with HubSpot and the expansiveness of that, of that

[00:09:06] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: HubSpot's great. We use, HubSpot internally, the gravity forms and, love it. I just, did a video on, top five tools to really enhance your gravity Forms experience and, the. First one, in, in that list was HubSpot. so we have a really great relationship with them, and that's kind of led to the, creation of the, of this ebook and this ongoing campaign

[00:09:29] Matt: Once long, long time ago, was like HubSpot CRMs, eh, there's no need for these, these complex tools. mind you, this was probably over, definitely over a decade ago. Now, these things are so darn powerful, and so robust that HubSpot is just one of those tools that in my last gig, my last two previous gigs, I used HubSpot.

[00:09:53] And once I got into that ecosystem, and this is something that, I'm gonna fanboy a little bit about HubSpot, but they, they did it right man, they did it right with content marketing, with their, educational portal where you get certified. and I thought going into it like, ah, God, just another, like, who needs to be certified on a SaaS app?

[00:10:12] Like, do I really need to learn things about sales and marketing? Having been in sales and marketing all my life? And the answer was yeah, because once you got into it, their educational tools are so darn good and they keep reinvesting in them. I remember when I last, when I left, My last two jobs ago went to my next job.

[00:10:33] I had them transfer over my certifications to my, because one, I didn't want to spend eight hours doing it again. And two, I just wanted to be like, Hey, like I put a lot of work into getting these HubSpot certifications and it became like this tangible thing, for me and for others. And, they just do it right with the education and how they approach sales and marketing.

[00:10:54] So it's a tool, but it's also. This larger ethos of how to do sales and marketing in an ever-changing online landscape. And I think they do that really well.

[00:11:04] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: So I, I got a question for you. When we talk about like, breaking down CRMs and Hub fun and things like that, at what stage, if you're a new business owner or you're growing your business, at what stage should you start look, thinking about looking at CRMs?

[00:11:19] Matt: If you're. Website. That's a fantastic question. If your website is generating revenue for you, in other words, the lead coming through your website, the contact form has value to it, then you should be using, a crm, HubSpot, or something else, right?

[00:11:38] Let's just take a side step here.

[00:11:40] HubSpot can start for free, but it gets pretty expensive. As you invest more in it, it does a lot more for you, that's for sure. but in the beginning, could be overkill for some. There might be others that are out there that are much more focused on a small business solution. I could go on and on about the value of a website [00:12:00] and, and what it means for a business, but.

[00:12:03] I'll tell you as we go, come into spring, quickly into summer, I start like looking at landscapers who can come clear my yard, who can come put new seed down, down, all this stuff. So I do what I always do, which is I start searching on Google, who has the best website for this kind of thing. And I say, well, I'm gonna contact these five companies and we'll see who responds to their email.

[00:12:24] And I, as I. I get every year a 0% response rate, you know, from, from these small businesses that just have a website and don't realize that my contact form is worth a few hundred bucks, a few thousand bucks. I don't know. Like you'll sell me and you'll tell me about your services. and I think a small business has to see that.

[00:12:45] Or a consultant. If you're building websites for people, this is your opportunity to educate customers that. This isn't just a portfolio website where somebody passes by, they flip through the pages and they're gone. If you have a contact form there and you have a service that's a couple hundred bucks, a couple thousand bucks, that person contacting you needs to be tracked, right?

[00:13:07] You get the email, it'll go into your HubSpot, and then HubSpot will say, Hey, here's an automatic email to that customer or, He'll tell you, Hey Matt, it's time to knock on that person's door and say, have you bought from us yet? Have I pitched you this idea? Have you got the information that you need? that's a long way of getting to, I think any business that has a valuable lead coming through should have a CRM as a support tool, as a safety net to get them to reach out to their customer and not just let it fall into their inbox.

[00:13:39] Because if they're super busy or they're not technically savvy, That email's gonna get lost, man. And I think that's what happens with a lot of people,

[00:13:46] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: And it helps you not lose out on potential revenue.

[00:13:50] Matt: A hundred percent. So check that stuff out. We got this HubSpot ebook. We'll link that up in the show notes, blog posts that I, wrote about HubSpot and increasing your agency profitability if you're an agency. And then Dustin's video, on.

[00:14:04] Five Tools to enhance your Gravity Forms experience with HubSpot

[00:14:08] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: I actually have, A breakdown episode from, I guess we'll call it the first season of breakdown, on CRM specifically. And I go into more detail on, on HubSpot in that as well.

[00:14:18] Matt: We're gonna move into WordPress Picks of the week. We'll, move into our WordPress picks of the week. I just said that we'll look at three links that we think might be of interest to you as the WordPress user or freelance agency owner. just looking at some three trending topics, big impacts around the WordPress.

[00:14:35] Ecosystem that you should be aware of. And, I picked these three. We'll chat about 'em. really briefly. Gutenberg 15.6 introduces experimental details block and command center for site editor. I just wanna focus on the command center for site editor because I still struggle with using full site editing.

[00:14:58] I know it's early [00:15:00] days for full site editing. Dustin, I don't know how much you've played with it, but it is still not, listen, it's still for me, for my money. It's still not up to par with your typical page builder experience. the Beaver Builders, the Elementor of the world. I know it's heresy to say in some circles, but it is just those building experiences are building experiences that I can wrap my head around.

[00:15:26] Full site editing still not there for me.

[00:15:28] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: Yeah, and I've, I've, you know, gotten feedback on YouTube videos before, or like specifically when I did a video on styling your forms with Orbital, one of the comments that I got on that was, Hey, how do I use this in a non Gutenberg interface? so we're, yeah. So, we're working on that, but it's. We understand that, you know, not everyone loves Gutenberg.

[00:15:56] Matt: Obviously the continued updates and anyone who's been in software, who's been in WordPress and or software for any amount of time. I mean, just think about your iPhone or your Android phone. Think about it, five, 10 years ago. How, how it was, like, how was that experience compared to today?

[00:16:14] Software and the experience will get better.

[00:16:17] So check that link out. that'll be obviously in the show notes if you wanna learn more about that.

[00:16:21] also from WP Tavern, certified WP launches, WordPress Management and Design. certification program might be the first of its kind that I've seen. The new credential costs $150 for the exam and includes three courses towards mastering front end development. I won't go into all the details. You can click the link to see it.

[00:16:42] I think what's most interesting is, WordPress has a weird stigma in the development community.

[00:16:50] I know people might be at the gym now or out for a run, ready to throw their phones when I say that because most of us are WordPress developers and designers who are listening to this.

[00:16:58] You know, the shtick, if you walk into a Hacker News column and you say, Hey, WordPress is great for this, they all come at you with their better JavaScript stack or framework of choice.

[00:17:08] and they, they don't, they don't want to use WordPress for whatever, for whatever reason. We heard from Steven earlier in the show. you can build some phenomenal things with WordPress, gravity forms and a whole bunch of other plug-ins. To me, it's the oldest no-code platform that we have, on the internet.

[00:17:26] and it's kind of cool to see people sort of having. , WordPress management design, and I'm sure they'll have development credentials that they can get certified for in the future because these are powerful tools that enable people to have jobs, these days from publishing to design, right?

[00:17:42] You can do a lot with WordPress and, and get employed to do a lot with WordPress In my book.

[00:17:47] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: There's also, there's wordpress.org and there's wordpress.com and we have, a Gravity forms, , option for, wordpress.com and, and there's a Gravity Forms, , solution for form [00:18:00] building on wordpress.com right now. But, .

[00:18:02] If you have no experience building websites, like you don't even have to worry about registering a domain if you go through wordpress.com. But if you wanna get more technical, you got WordPress do.org. It's a very flexible, way of, of creating a website.

[00:18:17] Matt: Third link here, WooCommerce launches, woo Express. A WooCommerce hosted solution if you're looking for a more robust, e-commerce solution. by way of, of WooCommerce, of course. W W Express is a new managed hosting product that uses WordPress dot com's infrastructure infrastructure, speaking of.com, and relieves store owners of the responsibilities of hosting, and maintenance.

[00:18:41] a little over a year ago, I had the pleasure to, interview the then. CEO of wordpress.com and I asked him about, WooCommerce and a direct competitor Shopify, like, when are we going to see a direct competitor? where you could just go Apples for apples, here's Shopify, here's W Commerce. Host it, obviously, you know, go ahead and make the comparison.

[00:19:04] Here we are, year and a half, maybe two years later, kind of getting a Shopify competitor. But I feel like it's just, they just dipped a toe into the pool of, of e-commerce hosting, through the WooCommerce brand. We'll see how that matures. But there's a lot, lot of stuff going on at automatic.

[00:19:24] I can totally understand that. There's, not enough time to do everything that they want to do in the, in the hosted WooCommerce solution world.

[00:19:31] Dustin_2023-04-25_16;19;08: Yeah,

[00:19:32] Matt: 40 bucks a month, or 25 bucks a month billed annually. it's hosted WooCommerce essential in performance packages. you can check it out at woocommerce.com/express.