 Thank you. Thank you so much so daughters to developers training teens to WordPress this talk started because I started an agency and had daughters who were at the age where they were learning to work and So they needed jobs so WordPress since it was so prevalent in my life was something I wanted to pass on to them and and That's that's the whole reason behind the talk was I wanted them to have a job where they could Take it with them where they and where they didn't have to be tied to retail or selling burgers or Selling flowers or something. I wanted them to have something that they could take with them on their laptop So that's the whole reason behind the talk and now I'm going to get started Do you remember when you were a child? Good good. Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager? Yeah Okay, well, maybe some of you are not really far from that age actually But for the rest of us it could seem like a long time ago and When we were young we tried to plan out our lives didn't we I know I did Yeah, okay. Well, I knew what I wanted to be Like most girls my age I wanted to be Wonder Woman However, I didn't realize the amount of time talent height and fitness required for such a dream. I Also lacked the magical glider that would lead me to the Amazon and with that realization. I had to look for a plan B Many people like me and maybe like you learn to adapt their life plans to their particular Circumstances we learned school of skills of thought Skills and schools of thought and we develop habits and then we apply them to the circumstances that evolve in our lives Not all of us can train to be Amazon warriors We need to be open to the changes that life presents and always be ready to shift into a new plan Recognizing this and embracing this has helped me in my life Oh, whoops wrong slide. There we go And it's helped my cup the people in my company the individuals around me and it's helped my daughters And we're gonna be talking about that today and how because they've seen me have a life that shifted They understand that their lives will probably have similar things happen and that they need to be prepared in the event of whatever comes But first I want to introduce you to a 17-year-old girl She had started at a university as a music major and she desperately wanted to play in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Her grandparents had both played in that orchestra She was young and full of energy and she had drive and dreams She had an example to follow because of her grandparents her great-grandmother was born in 1886 and broke all the social barriers of her time to pursue a career playing the violin in Los Angeles This girl spent three to four hours a day practicing her instrument Anxious to impressed and truth be told keep up with the other students at the university The first month of college was busy and hard, but she kept at it carefully balancing the Time it took to have a social life as well as a school life and One night while driving home from a friend. She was in a car accident The car flew in the air World around and ended up in a tangled mess She was able to walk away slowly and in pain But all in one piece without serious injury. So it seemed a few days later. She was still in pain though So she went to the doctor She was told that her injuries would require several months recovery and maybe several years and that She needed to continue with physical therapy The doctor explained that her injuries were being worsened by playing her instrument and that for every hour She played she was going to have to do two hours of physical therapy to undo what she'd done She questioned what would she do and the doctor gave her some great advice The doctor said you have other talents. I've heard you say you'd like to write you should try the local newspaper See if they need some help and so she did So that 17 year old girl was me and I took the advice of that doctor. I Moved to my plan C The next day I went to my local community newspaper and asked if they had anything I could do Sorry, I lost my mouse here That's gonna take me down there and Luckily, they were looking for someone they Looked at me and said we need a man on the street And I was surprised and wasn't quite sure how to react to that and they said here. Here's a camera Go and interview people ask everyone the same question and come back and write your story It wasn't glamorous, but it sure was fun I took pictures of everyone I could interview and kept asking questions until I had a variety of answers to write the story That one day helped me realize a lifetime passion. It inspired me to a love for community. I Found new purpose and asking people things about things that matter to them and about their community Within a couple of weeks. I was covering real news for the newspaper I was given my own desk and the opportunity to write about the police log and Building permits and I especially liked my column up on real estate transactions I Was interpreting data and writing up stories and remember I was only 17 years old The publisher took a special interest in me He liked my work ethic and he loved that I cared about the people I was working with and what I was doing Because of that he began to teach me everything I would need to know to later run a group of community newspapers In many ways he prepared me for the rest of my life Which led to me accepting plan D? At the ripe old age of 22 I left my career as a journalist to become a wife and later a stay-at-home mom The excitement of staying home lasted about three months and Before long I was itching for the thrill of the newsroom again. I started working from home With a non-profit publishing their monthly magazine out of my spare office It was a lot of work, but I loved it and I loved that I had the skills to make it happen Skills that I had built up over a lifetime all from my own home Skills that I had learned from working at the newspaper Skills that I had learned from producing their monthly dining and entertainment magazine These things came back into my life my husband Jared was a programmer and he provided that non-profit with their first website Since he also had a full-time job at a large corporation I Ended up having to do a lot of the management for that website. I learned how to make updates and design changes and Was shocked to find out how much it really was like running a newspaper and building a newspaper My husband became ill and began and so I began to manage the website exclusively I'll lay enough. I found myself prepared for that because he had taught me step by step the process of how to continue the website and what code to use and what places to put things and I was grateful and I was also sad because during this time. He actually got very sick and his illness progressed and he passed away Which brought me to plan E. I started consulting small businesses and Through that found a job as a writer Only they referred to me as a blogger. I blog several times per week for a company called today.com and This gave me the freedom to work part-time from home all the while surrounded by my children I didn't have this many children at that time But this is a photo of me and my family. You'll notice that there are Let's see one two three four five six seven eight children my husband and I I'm the arrow and that four of the girls have circles around their heads I'm the arrow. I'm in the middle always in the thick of things in my family and With a large family when I remarried. This is what we ended up with I was always in the center of everything and so Working from home was ideal because it gave me something to do while still being able to Help my family to grow When today.com decided to change their pay structure in 2009, I had to find a plan F And I was recruited to a website development company that needed a blogger who could write community news It was a perfect fit and I began writing all of their custom content It was here that I used my previous skills It was here that I realized that plans a through F had prepared me and had worked together For this position and it was here that I recognized that I needed a plan G so after in So after six years, I decided to launch my own blogging company and I launched a website at need someone to blog.com Back then I only had five clients and one assistant writer However growth occurred quickly and I realized I was going to need help to deliver the quality. I expected at the end of my first year My business coach suggested I hire somebody because we've gone from five clients to 35 clients and It was more than the one writer that I had as my assistant and I could do together So I reached out to friends to see if they knew anyone and found three more writers All were women who placed their priority on child rearing But sought out part-time methods to share their ability to write and research Like I had done years before And it was very satisfying to know that I was helping other highly educated women Stay at home and find their plans B through Z It was rewarding and energizing for them to and it propelled all of us to really move forward as a team as Opportunity came we had to be ready for it I developed a training program to make sure the writers followed our company standards in all content I went from being the all-star writer to being the head of quality control I read everything before it went on a client site to make sure that it represented our brand and provided feedback to my writers Together we cleared up questions and fine-tuned the process and I launched our in-house certification for some of our clients So that they could have a do it a self do it yourself approach During this time we continued to grow as a company two of my sister-in-laws reached out looking for interesting work and Decided to come on as social media managers Other friends came to me as well a friend's daughter reached out needing part-time work as a receptionist So I wrote an if-then script on different scenarios and had her memorize them in our community voice and Hired her part-time though. She was only working 10 to 12 hours a week She kept our clients happy because they heard a voice and not voicemail And this allowed me to have some downtime during the weekday hours because from that picture we saw before of all those kids My time was very busy And I needed to have some downtime What I found was that I had unknowingly tapped into a local workforce of people who needed and wanted to be employed Pretty soon. It was time to hire more writers And it was also time for my daughters and my niece who happened to all be excellent writers to start earning their own money at 16 and 17 years old Remembering that when I was 17, someone saw the value in me. I wanted the same for them. I Recruited them to work for me So hoping that I'd accomplish more than just gaining new labor. I wanted to deepen their understanding of what I did Who I was and bring a different dynamic into our relationships. I Secretly anticipated that they would love the work I do And that we were doing at the company and that they'd want to be more involved As I was ready to be less involved in the day-to-day operations Because you see when I first became a mom of little girls I'd read a book called see Jane win by dr. Sylvia rim The premise of the book revolved around being intentional when raising daughters and shared examples of parenting gone. Well One of the biggest parenting takeaways for me was to be a coach not a judge And I set out to do just that as a mom My parenting was not perfect But I knew that same approach could be successful when training my daughters on job skills I had to balance the role of being a mom and Being a boss which meant I had to have definite expectations of timeliness respect Vacation sick days and I also needed to explain and really show them through example that sometimes work is tedious and sometimes Even the best work has to be redone and we had to learn together That a critique of the work was not a critique of the person and it wasn't a personal criticism of them I Trained my daughter and my nieces on the key, uh, sorry my niece only one nuances of keywords and phrasing I Taught them the value of the story and we had discussions on website content and social media posts lots of discussions Then I taught them something even more valuable. I taught them to rely on other women for help To reach out to the writers content curators and mentors on our team and in my personal business circle Rachel carry Bridget Siri Jennifer and more in doing so they were no longer just working for mom or aunt Jenny They were part of an organization of strong women who could lend support They saw others besides me who were managing remote work and realized it really could be done They watched us as Bridget and Elizabeth and I launched women who WP and as it developed and felt the support for my tech friends in WordPress in some ways witnessing the growth of that organization It may have had more influence on them than working for me Of course, I also taught them skills I showed them what options were available with websites and encouraged them To learn about and launch their own blogs in WordPress. I Showed them how to log into a site write a blog post add an image and check their writing with my favorite plug-in I Showed them how to share that post on social media and how to build an email list and Suddenly it wasn't just my daughters Who were helping me write and build websites? Their friends of all genders became involved as well Some days we gather at the local cupcake shop and I teach new skills to whoever wanted to learn whenever and wherever we were I Accompanied my one of my daughter's choirs on a trip they were singing in the Vatican and on that trip we ended up on With one of her friends Morgan who later worked for me on a transatlantic flight and I'm teaching him how to Create some designs on my iPad so that we could use those later We went through an image mapping phase where I taught 17 and 18 year olds That one skill for several weeks and then had them apply it to dozens of websites when needed. I Taught others how to link check a website then it was page building and some HTML For very specific projects and I discovered that any time I took the time to train or create a training video It freed me up to explore ways that I could grow the business or work on my own writing and projects Plus as my daughters and their friends went on to study at their universities They had part-time jobs working on websites writing blog posts reviewing SEO and website pages creating graphics and logos and coding for companies that weren't necessarily owned by me Once I started creating those videos of needed tasks the world opened up literally The world opened up literally who world I was able to hire a full-time assistant in the Philippines Her name was Ash. She was amazing and Ash assisted me in multiple roles and she loved her job She learned my voice and began answering my emails She created artwork to be used in social media She searched for stock images that would work well in client blog posts as well as on our websites She proofread and link checked and navigated spreadsheets and project management tools like a pro She backed me up on projects when Time was short and freed me to take extended trips like this type of a conference She set a standard that I use when hiring other virtual assistants and staff members I Including my daughters. I now have a distributed workforce of 16 talented people As you grow as a company, it's critical to develop plans and use tools that make sense for your organization And you have to be flexible whether you're in one office or spread across 12 countries You have to have a system that works for you A Google Drive for document collaboration and several project management tools made this easier for all of us Most communication was done through these tools or email and Facebook messenger I tried to implement a Slack channel, but it wasn't as natural to my newfound staff You know part-time tech people they didn't want to learn it and so we use tools that work better for them Since specific skills were taught and timed it was easy to attach a monetary value to the work that was done And I could pay very well since my staff was now skilled and able to replace my time on projects Much more than money was gained from this experience though. It became a lesson in self-discipline team collaboration team management marketing entrepreneurship business Friendship and trust Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Connie Schultz said we must carry as we climb in this life And I like to think that's what we did and continue to do These are some of the things that the people the the young teens that worked for me found that they learned Work can be fun part-time work can pay well Job skills can translate into career skills You can work work into your life adults have to learn to Tech doesn't have to be hard Coding a website doesn't have to be hard and it's possible to Google or YouTube to learn new skills They also learned that work conferences can be fun especially WordPress or Word Camp conferences social media became more of a science than an art to us and They learned that tools exist to help and help work whether it's from scheduling posts to finding images in a stock account and They also learned that WordPress is an amazing tool My daughter Riggly is here with me Riggly She's an example of how all of this has come to life she graduates from her university in December She took the knowledge that she gained at need someone to blog and applied it elsewhere. I Started getting phone calls from her while she was away at school saying mom. I'm taking a Java course Or she'd send me a text with a link to a website. She just built In the last four years she's developed her skills as a designer because she actually went a little bit of a different route I thought it would just be a shoe-in. I thought she was gonna be a writer, right? No she Loves the look of websites and so she has gone from tell them what you've gone through loudly She started a web design And graphic design our education our education studio art back to graphic design and now Graduating in web design and back to graphic design before graduating in web design so she Incorporated really all the things that she had been given a glimpse of while working for me she tried them all out at school and then ended up back to web design and she's now ready to Leave her mark on the world Using all the information that she's been gathering since she was 16 years old And now Riggs attending word camps with me, which is really fun for me In her words word camp is opening up whole new avenues of communication and showing me a world of WordPress Beyond the computer screen I taught them and they taught me here are some of what I learned through the process Diversity is more important than gender It's reaching out to people of all ages and all walks of life It's banding together to bring out the best in one another and it's respect regardless of differences Providing skills to the next generation is more than just passing on technical knowledge Training teenagers requires artful management of time and a dedication to building systems and processes You don't truly know something and so you've had to break it down and view it through someone else's eyes When you can see each bit of knowledge as a piece of a larger puzzle Then you can reassemble it all and teach someone how it fits together I as a business owner and mentor was constantly learning and improving and Shifting to meet the needs of caring for my staff I found it drew my team closer when they realized I didn't have all the answers either Plus I didn't want them to always feel they were the only ones being challenged and I felt like I Was always learning something new because in this tech world Things are always being thrown at us and there are new things to learn every day and I didn't really understand Why it was so challenging for these teens who seem to go from thing to thing pretty easily to pick up new skills sometimes and so I decided that I needed a lesson in empathy really and I went ahead and took a class from Udacity on front-end development and This did definitely provided me some empathy because it was a lot of new skills that I suddenly was learning and it was good for my Girls my children and the people who worked for me to see that I still was trying to improve my skills and It helped me to understand what they were doing as they balanced home and school and work responsibilities because it was hard So it taught me empathy and it made me a better mentor My daughters may look and act like me but they weren't me and That's something else that I had to come to a realization of that I needed to respect their own skills and Their way of looking at life and help them to be the best that they could be Just because they were following my career path Didn't mean they were going to do it the same way I did So we all need to mentor one another and help those looking on our sons and our daughters our family and our friends as they discover their way in WordPress and beyond Thank you Any questions? Want to know what really is plan B is really what's your plan B? Plan B is work for someone other than myself So she Work for someone other than me or than herself, right? Because right now you work for me Yeah, so that's my plan B right perfect My number one tip what would be my number one tip for starting entrepreneurs as You're just starting out. It's great to have a vision and goals but it's really important to break it down and See like set your goals and then try to make achievable Milestones as you're you're progressing When I launched my business I mentioned I had five clients Five clients I could manage on my own, but I couldn't do that and manage my business And so that's why I hired someone to help And I had no idea we were gonna have 35 clients by the end of that first year But I set a goal to try to get three more clients every month and pretty soon I was at 35 and then the next year I thought okay. Well, let's see if we can double that We ended up with a hundred at the end of our second year and so and now we have much more And that's something that I would never have seen I couldn't have even Envisioned that we were gonna go from five to a thousand in five years, you know but once That happened Now I can look back and say well it was really incremental It was just bigger numbers than I ever anticipated and so sometimes just doing the work just getting started on That path and hitting those milestones gets you to where you hopefully will be Yes, yeah, I really like your story. It was very moving. Thank you. I also like your appeal on diversity and so on Thank you I was wondering how come that so many people working for you were women or girls and not that many men Okay, so he's wondering why so many people working for me are women and not men or boys I actually do have men and boys working for me, too The focus of this talk was daughters to developers because we're trying to encourage women to get more active in the word press space but my project manager is actually a male and my I Have website builders and I have I don't have any writers right now who are male. Do I I don't think so No, but I have in the past and It's just who comes to me part of The teenagers that work for you. Yeah, the teenagers because they were friends with my daughters They wanted to do whatever my daughters were doing, you know They they learned the business and it was very good But a lot of times they go off to school and then they're you know, once they're there they're doing their own I own agenda at that point, but yeah, Stephen right-hand person. So I do I do have a man in my organization Any other questions? Yes Thank you Do you have a regret within your career path that you took a road a plan that you created that you wouldn't later on Okay, why didn't learn any skills from that? I didn't take anything with me Okay, so his question is do I have any regrets or are there any traps that you should look out for as an entrepreneur? yes, I Get very involved in my work and I did not set specific hours in the beginning and so while my kids were young I Would work too much And I would balance it between their school schedules and their sleep schedules So it didn't affect them as much, but I didn't sleep very much for the first three years at least probably the first five And so that's something that I regret because I I don't know that I was as available in my off hours As I could have been with more sleep the other thing that I would say is that in the beginning I took every client and As I've grown up as a business. I've realized that there are some clients that Are not a good fit for me and it's better if I I usually know it right away And it's better if I just acknowledge that and respond to it before engaging them and trying to make it a fit then Then proceeding with it from the get-go Any other questions? Okay, how many of you have daughters? How many of you have daughters that work with you? good And how many of you because you saw this talk today are thinking a little differently about your word at press experience in Conjunction with those daughters anybody Good, okay All right, well, thank you so much for coming out if you have questions. I'll be here To answer them for a few minutes until the next speaker comes in so