 All right, hi guys, I know we're kind of a little running a little rush right now, so we'll try to move quickly So working alone sucks. I mean, let's really put it simply That's not to say that anybody who works for yourself or working remotely is a problem, but not sure what Something going on do I need to do anything? No, we're good. Okay. Sorry guys. Okay, so yeah working working by yourself It's really just not a good time. I've done it for many many years in 2007 I started up a Business with a couple of buddies of mine after things kind of went south in 2010. I find myself basically working by myself For the three years prior to that I I did business stuff. I did not know any coding. There was really Nothing that connected me to WordPress other than the SEO guy I was working with said hey all these projects that are just left half developed Why don't you move them over to WordPress? It's something I think you could handle. So that's that's what I did and Years later. I now I do premium plugins custom themes I mean if it needs to be coded I coded and literally everything I learned except for a little bit of front-end from one of my good friends I learned from this community and Really everything that's my success over the past few years not to say that I'm you know rolling in the money or anything But the success that I've had has come from being involved in this community So for four years, this is what I did. I lived this. I read forums I read blogs I did not come to a word camp from 2010 to 2014 and honestly I think it was probably one of the best things I could have done now some people are on a bit of a faster learning curve than I am So they might have you know move forward a little quickly from this, but I really found like a very large subset of blogs to read or you know plugins that I knew fulfilled the requirements that I had things that I could build off of People I could reach out to and it wasn't a lot of one-on-one. It was you know discovering Pippin's blog for the first time in 2010 and it was you know reading things that every all these amazing people have put together That taught me how to code and then I don't know if any of you've had this fun experience But we also have a or used to have a very active WordPress community in IRC chat And so I would jump in there occasionally and get flamed for not knowing how things work So track forward about four years and after just reading and reading and occasionally answering some questions on the forums. I Felt like I was an expert in WordPress. I felt like I was an expert of WordPress. That's the interesting thing there's a lot of theories about how we go from novice to expert and Most people don't really realize or find it very frustrating that after we move to that expert level Very quickly you move if you're doing it right at least I think you move right back to Intermediate or even novice because if you're at a point where you feel like you know everything about a subject You're not looking deep enough and I think that's where I was at I would go to these client meetings and albeit I'm still working by myself at this point it was really hard to find these clients when you don't have a community to work with and I would portray myself as the expert because I mean everybody's an expert to somebody else and It worked out very well every time until I run into a problem, and then I would rack my brains It you know It's very easy for a development problem or a business problem to all of a sudden very quickly become almost Depression because you don't know what to do And if you don't have a community if you don't have people to talk to about this That are doing what you're doing You find yourself completely lost. I mean There are times where I think I've done Google searches and I've literally come up with you have six results And they're all from the same page and none of them are even remotely applicable what I'm looking for and had I been working within a community Had I known that there were literally thousands of other people just like me out there? It probably would have taken 15 minutes to find somebody to send me an article a link a guide You know a github just whatever it would have been to solve my problem not because they were going to solve my problems for me But because it was just going to make My life better and maybe I'm going to help them out. Maybe they just happen to know it They've stuck they've been stuck in that situation for a while Which brings me to my my very first I think piece of advice if you haven't taken anything yet from this Whenever you go into these situations when you're on a forum when you're looking for an answer for this plug It doesn't do this if you see somebody else asking a question that you can answer answer it Don't hesitate don't blink log in sign up if you have to and answer it because that person can solve your problems later You'll never know it until it comes up But if you want help from a community like ours the best thing you can do is try to give back more than you take Away from it because what we'll take away is more than enough for each person I mean the pie is at this point in time the pie is more than big enough for all of us and It's there's a camaraderie there that we don't have in other groups I was the business end of things for many years and I went to American Marketing Association Meetings and a number of other groups that would meet and it was really about passing off business cards It wasn't about helping one another. It wasn't about bonding over a common experience which Leads me to the next part You know, maybe maybe you're not at the point I was not at the point in 2013 2014 I was not ready to Talk to other people in any real way beyond Maybe IRC or Twitter and it's not that I didn't feel comfortable with it But I was still I felt like an imposter and I'm sure if you guys haven't heard about it yet You will as this weekend goes on imposter syndrome is a very real thing when you've spent four years Like I did reading everything you could that's wordpress related trying to be as much of an expert as possible when all of a sudden you're Watching these presentations on wordpress.tv or you're listening to some amazing podcast by some very smart people It becomes very easy to feel like you're the imposter in the room that you don't have anything like these guys know everything already What do you have to contribute? But it's it's your experience. It's your uniqueness. It's what they've gone through slightly different from you or maybe completely different from you that you can bring to the table and It didn't take long after this step in my life to actually make the jump to actually being here In fact being here right now today I spent maybe a year listening to watching presentations on wordpress.tv listening to podcasts Before I felt like these people were my friends and I mean I didn't know them I hadn't met them yet But you know everything about them from their podcast or not everything but a lot very personal information because it's just a couple of People chatting for 45 minutes for 30 minutes and I have the good fortune of August in 2014 making the decision to go to word camp New York City. I Was there bright and early Nervous as can be because it was my first day I had no idea what to expect and the first person that I talked to and I met was Andrew Nason Now if any of you know who Andrew Nason is then you realize he's a very nice guy He's not hard to talk to but when You're you know in my position when you feel like an imposter already seeing somebody that is Seem to have their name on everything wordpress as some sort of in some sort of way they've reviewed it They've discussed it. You can there's articles written about the things that he does To meet him and just to have a very one-on-one conversation You realize that these coding heroes that at least that I have and I know so many of us do They're normal people so what I mean not even just I mean they're brilliant. I don't want to take away from that but They struggle with you know walking through an array just like any of us might on a given night if you're programming or Trying to figure out what plug-in is going to actually fill that gap for you because you know Sometimes it's not worth doing it yourself or paying someone to do it because the work's already been done I mean I've heard it at a couple of talks that reinventing the wheel It's never the way to go if you can avoid it because somebody else has already put the legwork in and that's what our community does is we have I think 30,000 plus plugins in the repo and that's not including premium plugins There's a lot of work that good work that's been out there from our community that will continue to help us become better And build better products So by jumping in joining the community. I went to the first word camp. I came right back I signed up to speak at word camp DFW. I spoke there. I spoke the next year now speaking here I help organize the meetup. I help I'm helping organize word camp DFW next year and in all this time it from 2014 to now I've increased my income by like 300 percent just for the fact that I work with the community again I'm not saying I am rich by any means when You're in a dry spell as a freelancer making 300 percent more isn't necessarily a lot of money But I have people who are willing to pass clients on to me I have people I can pass clients that I can't handle on to others Showing up to those meetups coming to word camps talking to as many people when they say there's a competition to see how many people You can connect with don't don't treat it as a competition treat it as your livelihood because it can be Every one of the people that you meet might have a job opportunity or something that is going to Significantly increase your ability to make money write better code write better blogs. I mean It is absolutely amazing and finally I'm probably over at this point But the most important thing that I've by getting involved is by finding a way to communicate with these people and by being able to get Of all that slack has become a great tool to use Every one of those things that are up there is a group that I actually belong to and there's lots more word press groups out There that are very specific to what you want to learn I I was I got the good fortune of being invited to a gravity-formed slack room and I have never had a shortage now of new information to learn about gravity forms That's not to say any other plug-in is not as good, but it's amazing the pods foundation Amazing plug-in amazing developers and now I have a huge network of people who know about this stuff that can help me Almost out of any given notice because I'm always willing to help them so What that said after all that the most important steps is To to work in your group is to be informed that doesn't mean know the answers But it means knowing when to ask the right questions trying to read what you can trying to stay informed so that you can be helpful to everyone Obviously be respectful. We live in a volunteer community. We work and live in this volunteer community The best way to succeed is to be noticed and not suck at what you do But and that actually has changed my life that line from Helen Ho Sandy I believe said that in word camp New York 2014 and that has been my mindset from here on out and be proactive If you see a problem if you see a way you can help somebody Just just do it take the five minutes to do it or show them where you would look any kind of help is always Hugely appreciated and just by being visible and being out there. You will increase your abilities in every aspect of your business infinitely Here's some these are all my resources. I've devised over the past seven years You can also find my slides. It's the very first post on mark ratch calm and Really if you have any questions whatsoever, don't hesitate to pull me aside I'm happy to help everybody and anybody that I can and any questions if we have time otherwise Thank you guys so much. Well, that's that's a whole another topic But I actually I use Yoast more than anything as a the blogs He writes about like newest Google updates things like that their team really stays on up to date on to any new Trends that are happening or anything that Google has changed unexpectedly. So it's it's Sorry say that again. I do use it as a it's a tool the plug-in itself But there's a lot of great SEO plugins out there. I The the list that I put here are really it's educational material. It's not any specific plug-in because there's But if you have questions about specific plugins, pull me aside. I'll go hang out at the happiness bar after this And with that Said is an amazing talker. Here he is