Tag Archives: entrepreneurs

Speaker Spotlight: Marianne Worthington

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 Marianne WorthingtonWe welcome Marianne to WordCamp Kansas City to share tips on building your team. She has a lot of experience and she was kind enough to share with us a little more about her history here!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I spent 10 years building teams in corporate America. In 2012 I decided to leave it all behind and go out on my own…helping business owners build really great teams. For the past year and a half I have been helping businesses grow their business, and profit, by building high performing teams.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: My “ah ha” moment with WordPress was I needed Jim Grant to keep me up and running!!

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Do more customer development calls. From the get go business owners need to be on the phone asking about pain points and verifying the product that you offer actually matters and solves a problem.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: When you build your team you build your business. From day one you need to have laser focus on what your vision is and ruthlessly recruit people that buy into that vision. During the session we will focus on how you can make sure that you are building a fantastic tribe that will help you build your business.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A:People who are looking to build their business and want to learn how to build a powerhouse team.

Speaker Spotlight: Mary Baum

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Mary BaumWe’re happy to introduce Mary Baum to our WordCamp Kansas City attendees. She got her start in print media and marketing, so we asked her to give a little more insight into how she got where she is.

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I’m trained as a print designer and worked as a combination art director and copywriter in advertising, in the 80s. In the 90s I worked with Maritz – still all in print, but growing my chops in digital design and production.I started doing sites in 1998, but did them in GoLive (wrong!) until 2007. That was when the Adobe Creative Suite switched to Dreamweaver, and I took that as a sign it was time to learn real html/CSS.

I was 47, and the first site I wrote that way was frontenactennis.com (Shocker!)

Once I had static sites down, I recognized I needed to offer more functionality – and flirted with Business Catalyst for a couple of years. Meanwhile, I was aware that I needed to start being able to design WP sites. I started my first few in summer 2010 (the year I turned 50, btw.) After a few CSS struggles and the realization I needed to learn php, I was done with Business Catalyst and committed to WP exclusively. 

In 2012, the last site I converted to WP was frontenactennis.com.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: There have been several:

  • The first was opening a second Genesis child theme and seeing its CSS was organized exactly as the first I’d opened was.
  • Another was answering a tweet with a joke that was a made-up php function about Keurigs.
  • Still others have happened every time I realize I just might have the hang of this hooks thing.
  • And then there have been all the times I’ve thought, “I’m a themer.”

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Skip BC. Learn php already.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Designing for conversion: The design decisions we make absolutely affect conversion. They tell a person this site is for them, or no, it’s not, with a million elements that combine to make one impression. But it’s copy that will seal the deal – especially such seemingly trivial copy as UI copy – the words on links, buttons and more.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A:Designing for conversion: intermediate designer, beginning developer, marketing junkie.
Mobile-first: intermediate designer, intermediate developer, advanced analytics junkie.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Heather Physioc

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Heather PhysiocHeather is a long-time SEO professional and well rounded digital marketer. She works at one of the largest marketing firms in Kansas City, but will be talking to us about the entrepreneurs she’s helped over the years. We caught up with her to get a bit more information about her history and her presentation.

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: Truthfully, my career in digital marketing started when I was 13 years old and created my first Geocities website, ha! It ultimately evolved into an online magazine called Heavy Frequency, which covered bands, musicians, and the music community in the Kansas City area.

I got my degree in Strategic Communications (Advertising) from the University of Missouri Journalism School. From there, I went on to work at agencies of all sizes (PlattForm, Fleishman Hillard, VML), specializing in search engine optimization and content marketing, among other digital marketing disciplines.

I was an SEO freelancer for several years, as well. As my clients’ interest and needs evolved, and they needed even more help to grow their small businesses, it ultimately led to the creation of Tentacle Inbound.

Now, I lead the SEO practice at VML and Red Fuse serving some of the world’s largest brands, and then on a smaller local scale, I own and operate Tentacle Inbound to serve small businesses.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: My eyes were really opened to WordPress when my clients kept coming to me for digital marketing services, but found themselves trapped by their hard-coded website builds that they didn’t understand or have access to, or clunky CMSs that simply didn’t get the job done. We couldn’t do our best work for them because they simply didn’t have the tools.

My clients needed a powerful website solution that was simple out-of-the-box, but could be customized to a great degree for each of their unique business needs. We’ve got clients that have a variety of needs, including e-commerce needs, hospitality booking, lead generation, community building, and so much more. WordPress can successfully meet the needs of all these clients with one simple, incredible platform.

In addition to my clients benefiting from the many perks of WordPress, my own business has been able to be flexible and grow without having to completely start from scratch on the website every time we’ve had to pivot over the years. The website has changed and grown with us, but the foundation has always stayed the same – thanks to WordPress.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Stop, and take the time to make a (flexible) plan. Start by defining goals first, then determining the strategy, then outlining tactics – not the other way around.

This seemingly simple approach applies to so many things in the professional world, from starting our own businesses, to pitching new clients, to building websites, to digital marketing strategies, to facing a conflict in the office, and so much more.

It’s easy to want to just dive in at the tactical level, but taking a little time to step back and think more strategically makes a world of difference for efficiency, effectiveness, and your own sanity.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Many small business owners find themselves trapped with outdated websites they can’t use, in an intimidating environment completely outside their comfort zones. Instead of having a valuable tool to grow with them and their businesses, they end up feeling held hostage by their websites. In my talk, I will share true stories of real clients who escaped captivity with the help of WordPress, and paved the path to better digital marketing, even on bootstrapper budgets.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Entrepreneurs and digital marketers will find this talk especially useful and relevant, but really, anyone who is selling their own WordPress services can benefit from understanding clients’ website pain points, and how WordPress solves those problems for them.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Melissa Roberts

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Melissa RobertsMelissa is a new and enthusiastic WordPress user who used the CMS as a tool to rebrand and rebuild a complex site. She’s a fixture of the startup community in Kansas City, so we wanted to get a little bit of her background for you!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: After starting off in politics, I fell into the non-profit world. Something that’s always been important to me–whether I’m working on a political campaign or in a non-profit role–is feeling like I’m working toward a goal that’s bigger than just completing daily tasks. These days, helping connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need to grow is what gets me up in the morning.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: To be honest, I’m still learning a lot about WordPress. I’ve managed many WordPress websites over the years, but I hadn’t built one until recently. My “ah ha” moment–the point where I felt I could really control the structure of a website–was when I first figured out how to make the landing page I had created actually display as the landing page for my domain. I’d been struggling to find out how to replace that “Hello World” blog page with the shiny landing page I has created. When I made that change and my first real landing page popped up–that’s when I felt like I could learn to build anything.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Ask people for help before you ask the Internet. I can spend all day digging through help forums and sometimes I find what I’m looking for, sometimes I don’t. I think the typical developer ethic is to try to find information on your own or try, try again until you fix a problem. But I’m not cut from that cloth and I learn differently. I found a handful of people who were always willing to give great advice and help me tackle problems. I think the lesson there is, don’t feel like because you’re learning to code or build websites, that you have to learn the way other people have learned or have the same mindset. Blaze a trail and find a system that works for you.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Enterprise Center in Johnson County is one of the oldest entrepreneurial support organizations in KC, and our website looked like it. I managed a rebrand and website rebuild process that changed our most public-facing asset to reflect a modern look. WordPress was the tool that made the process possible and affordable.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Those who should attend my talk are beginners or people who are looking to build an attractive website on the cheap. Or those interested in hearing a design and UX based discussion. Or people who are willing to to make jokes during the Q&A session. I appreciate a good pun.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Rebecca Haden

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Rebecca HadenRebecca Haden will be joining us again this year to talk about SEO, content, and collaborating in a distributed company using WordPress. We asked her a few questions about her work and her presentation so that you could get to know her better!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I started writing for the web in the 20th century, worked as an in-house SEO, went freelance, and now own Haden Interactive, where we build, optimize, and write for WordPress websites.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: We used to be platform agnostic, but we began to see that WordPress was better for our clients. It also allows us to provide the bells and whistles they want in a cost-effective manner.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Relax. It’s not as hard as you think.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A:  For Saturday, Get Out of Your SEO Time Machine: practical, ethical SEO for WordPress, with data, not just tips. For Sunday, World Domination — ahem, remote worker collaboration with WP, including the most useful plugins.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Site owners, publishers, and entrepreneurs who use WordPress.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!