 I picked up HTML for dummies and it was like, oh my God, this is what I'm supposed to do with my whole life. She sends me this racy blog to post. What, no, wait, when you say racy. It was alternative uses for dog toys. Oh, fantastic. The fact that there was like naked people in the room was just, wow. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. This is a show about messing up. This is a show about making mistakes in general. Like, I mean, we also talk about lots of other things because let's face it, I just really like getting to know people and you really like getting to know people and that's what we're gonna do. And tonight, we have Kami from Web Kami Site Design. She is a working, very busy web designer and for me, that's been pretty rare. So I'm excited to find out more. Let's get on with the show. Everybody, welcome to the show. I am here with Kami from Web Kami Site Design. Is that right? That's correct. You got it. Like it's that hard Web Kami Site Design to put that together. Tell us a little bit about what you do. Well, I'm a web designer here in Seattle, Washington and I build websites for small businesses and nonprofits. Oh, very cool. Only small businesses? Is that what you've done your whole career? It's pretty much what I've done my whole career. I kind of am looking for other small businesses like myself to work with, but occasionally I'll get a big fish like a large charity or something like that. Yeah, still like a nonprofit still. Yes, yeah. I have St. Vincent DePaul in Seattle as one of my clients. You know what, this is so interesting. One of the only websites I ever made money on building a website was St. Vincent DePaul in Phoenix, Arizona. Oh, cool. And I'm sure that they do not use what I made like, I don't know, 15 years ago, maybe? Yeah. So did you build your first site in Notepad? Like way back when? It was a really old, I think it was called arachnophobia. I don't know what you're talking about. Arachnophobia. I know, it's one of those weird names. It was that thing. It was kind of like that, but it would change colors for you and help you do all your things. Oh, the color syntax that came out. Super helpful. Yeah, that was cool. Because you were like, why isn't this working? Oh, I forgot to close a tag again. I remember working in front page for like, you know, but would only use the code side because it had really good color contrast. Yeah, because I would do this. We get so excited about syntax highlighting. Right now there are people watching that are like, nope, I'm done. Yeah. I have no idea what they're talking about. I'm so excited. I'm like, oh, I remember that. I remember that. You have been doing this for a while. That's great. A really long time. I love WordPress. Kindred Spirit. Yes, I'm so glad that came around and so much easier now. Was that the first CMS that you used or did you use like Moveable Type or Typepad? Oh no, WordPress was the first one that I used. That was the first one. And that's the one that you've even continued with. Yeah. You lucked out. I did. I didn't pick something else. Yes. Tell me how you got into it. Did you do print work previous to this? Did you do other types of design work previous to doing internet stuff? Well, not really. Do you remember a company in Seattle called J Jacobs? J. Oh, the clothing store. The clothing store. J Jacobs. Yeah, I totally remember them. I know you're from Idaho, so I figure you probably knew them. Jack, do you remember J Jacobs? Yeah. Did you buy clothes at J Jacobs? I did not. Didn't have the $99 men's suit at J Jacobs, I think, but I worked for that company. I was an allocation analyst, which I was one of the people that decided how much inventory a store would get. And so it was very computer paradox, and it was one of those jobs where you're just analyzing numbers all the time. But when I was in high school, I was yearbook editor, and I did graphic design in college, and so how I fell into this was I had a kid, and I didn't want to work at J Jacobs. I worked at Eddie Bauer too for a while, but I was like super long hours and traveling and everything, and I wanted something I could do from home. So I picked up HTML for dummies, and it was like, oh my God, this is what I'm supposed to do with my whole life, and I enrolled in school at Seattle Community College, and here I am. Oh my, so from J Jacobs, Eddie Bauer, stay-at-home mom, and then I didn't really, I couldn't just be a stay-at-home mom, it was driving me nuts. So did you start just out of your house? Did you get a place to- I sure did. I started at home, I started volunteering all over my community in West Seattle, and I did preschools and Little League, and the Seattle School District used to allow people to hire somebody to do an actual school website, so I did Schmitz Park Elementary, Al-Khai Elementary, and so that was kind of how I started getting traction, was volunteering. So backing up even further then, you did design work with the yearbook when you were in high school? Yeah, I was totally, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be Darren Stevens on BeWitched, like I saw those reruns, right, I'm not quite that old, but- That wasn't the astronaut. No, no, he was an advertising agent, and he had like a big pad of paper, you know, and he would show, anyway, you watch a rerun. No, like the astronaut was I Dream of Jeannie. Yes, different, different. No, I got you, I liked BeWitched. Yeah, so I used to make signs, my parents had their own business and I would make little advertisements for them, and so- Were they, this is really, of course they would use them, did they use your signs? Well, they hung them up in their shop, I don't think they- They were like, oh, let's go make a million of these. And it was, you know, it was like a Snoopy drawing with like, that kind of thing. What was the business that they were running? My parents made handbags and did arts and craft fairs all over the state of California for 30 years. Oh my God. So they would travel to different festivals and things like that? Yeah, they did the Gilroy Garlic Festival, like all the big ones in California. Wait, I don't even know what the Gilroy Garlic Festival- You don't know what that is? I just see you're like all the big ones in California. Oh, it's huge. And it's the Garlic Festival. The Garlic Festival's huge, yeah. But it was a really good, I learned how to sell and that has been a really important part of my business because I'm not just the behind the computer person, I'm also the salesman for my business. Yeah, well, you have to. Well, this is the first time I've seen your drink. It's behind you. Jack, are you, I think you're ready. Oh, I'm ready. He's ready. What are we drinking? Oh, we're drinking this most wonderful, tasty, delicious drink called the Sparkin' Synapse. We've got some gin here, some aquavit, pretty flowers. Bogamot. The tastiest of the tastes. Bogamot. That's beautiful. Wait, wait, uh, Bogamot. Wait, what's Bogamot, Jack? Citrus fruit. I've seen this before. It's citrus. Housemade lime rosemary shrub, maraschino. I wore the right jacket. What do we say, cheers, is that what we're gonna do? Yeah, cheers. All right, cheers. Okay, there's a straw. To Netscape. To Netscape. Oh wait, we have to do it. Okay. Netscape. To Netscape. Oh, I know there are nerds everywhere, rejoicing that we said. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Okay, web design, business, speaking from personal experience. Yes. Like not an easy gig to kind of continue with. You started off pretty early. There were like webmasters everywhere, like all over the place. Like how did you differentiate or create a career out of that when you've got like, hey, my like, I have a kid in a basement that can build a website for me. Oh yeah, I still get that. Yeah, I still get that. I, well, I think finding my business name, web cammy, ended up being a really great thing to do because in my neighborhood, I am the person that builds websites. And like, people will just call me web cammy, right? Because that's what I do. I call you web cammy. Like I almost introduced you as web cammy instead of just cammy. Yeah, it happens, it happens. But, you know, I feel like I just kept volunteering and kept, I just didn't go away. I was just always there and I really focused on my local communities. And so, you know, just that community experience really helped me build a good clientele. So started that smaller space. And now you just have the community. Right, I mean, start where you live and really reach out, tell all your friends what you're doing. I mean, I've done websites for my friends in California. You know, it just, it's a great way to get your name out there. Is there any equivalent that used to exist for the work that you do now? I think back in that timeframe, it probably would be sort of like yearbook stuff. Yeah, totally. I mean, I learned layout skills and things like that because you really need to have some good, I think you need good print design skills to be a good web designer. And, you know, white space and using space well and all that stuff. So I learned that. What were the challenges that you saw when you first started that, I guess from your past experience didn't quite translate? Like, what are the, what are sort of the difficulties that you saw with designing for the web that you didn't see in designing for like yearbook or print previously? Well, I guess you, I mean, I know that you had the what you see is what you get screen, right? But if you were wanted to be a coder, you were working in the other environment and you'd have to just always be flipping back and forth to check on how things were balancing when you were coding. So, you know, that was kind of an interesting piece to it. And, you know, I used to spend hours just making sure my navigation didn't move one pixel on every single page and things like that that just used to take hours of time that I don't even pay attention to now because I don't have to. Well, like the JavaScript rollovers when they first happened, right? On mouse, out on mouseover? On mouseover, right? And they would come over and then you would see like it's a pixel off. Oh yeah, I knew you'd be so upset. Like, why is that? I did the same thing. Why is it doing this? Oh, no, I know. And your each page had all your header information versus. Oh, because we didn't have includes at the time. Right. I would say that the thing that makes me cringe the most when I look back on starting my business was when I first started using WordPress and I had been building sites and code, right? So, now I have this dashboard and all the dashboards look the same. Right. So, I had more than one dashboard open. And I was- Because more than one website. I just, yeah, I had like 30 tabs open, right? Because that's how, I still do that, but I will only have one website open now because this happened. So, I had a client who was a waxer and she had a racy blog. And she said, this is, you know, few years ago, she sends me this racy blog to post. Okay. What, no wait, when you say racy. It was alternative uses for dog toys. Oh, fantastic. Okay. So, I'm putting this blog post up for her. Yes. And I hit, you know, publish and then I clicked the URL to check it and it opens up and it wasn't her blog. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. It was somebody else's blog. Yeah. So, I instantly knew I made the mistake, but I had the panicked feeling, right? And it was probably only up for 30 seconds. So, like I instantly delete it and then I'm just like sweating it for like, I can't believe I just did that. But it was up for 30 seconds. I checked the Wayback machine for a year because I was afraid- I was just gonna say the same thing. I was like, what does Wayback capture? But it didn't. I mean, I would have to capture it at the very moment that I published it. Well, I'm a little disappointed because I love that you just said you checked it because guess what I was gonna do as soon as we were done? What? Go to the Wayback machine. Yeah, it's not on there. It's not on there. Like a hundred percent. But it was like the most sinking feeling I've had as a business owner. It was like, how could I mess that up? Like it was just, it would have been okay if I put it on the Doggie Daycare website, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's on the Doggie Daycare website. But anyway, that was a learning experience. I do not work on more than one website at a time. What is it that you don't know where you've got to pull in somebody else? Or if you just had to bootstrap and figure out everything across the board for what you're doing to like run an actual business, like make a living doing what you're doing? Well, I try to stay in my lane so I don't take on a lot of projects that I'm not really a hundred percent sure are right for me. And so that's where all these partnerships come into play. Is that like a lesson to learn? Oh, big time. Oh yeah. Yeah, you know, there's nothing, when you're first starting out your business, you're like, you get opportunities and you're like, oh sure, you found that theme on Theme Forest? I can do this. And then you log in and you're like, oh my God, I've never seen anything like this. I don't know. You don't even know who made the theme. Right. It could be totally, yeah. Yeah, it could be like they bought the theme that only three had been sold or something and there's no support or... So I developed my own system and now if somebody comes to me, they're gonna get a website built with what I use. And they're gonna host it where I recommend and they host it and they're gonna get their domain name where I... Yeah, yeah. And so I just kind of, that is totally a huge lesson that I wish I would have learned early because I spun out trying to do so many things that I just had no idea what I was doing. I mean, that makes sense if you're like just doing it all on your own. So as soon as somebody says like, I have money, I'll give it to you. You're like, okay. And when you're starting... What do you want me to do? Yeah. Or they'd ask you to make a business card and then the next thing you know, you're doing their brochure and you're still, the whole time you're doing it, you're thinking, but I'm really just a web designer. This is not what I want to spend my day doing. So did you do brochures? Oh yeah. Yeah. Do you do that now? Oh no. You're clear. I've got my trusted partner. Lindsay, you know, I have my go to. Thank you Lindsay. Yeah. And you go to her for taking care of that stuff now. That's right. I send people to work with her directly. The more confident I got in what I was doing, the easier it was for me to say no to projects. Cause we all, I'm a people pleaser man. I want to make people happy. And so of course, you know, I've got this client. I did their website. Now they want me to do a business card. I hate doing business cards, but I'm gonna do it cause I just love this client, you know. And it's spent 15 hours building a business card cause I'm not that good at it. And it's spent longer on the business card than the website. Yeah. I've done the exact same thing for sure. So I think that's just something people learn over time. Is there anything that you would do, like if you weren't doing this, you have anything else where you like have that inkling of, that looks like fun, something you might want to do. I really think I'm doing exactly what I was meant to do. Like I used to, when I was in high school, I wanted to be the yearbook lady that came to all the high schools to teach people. Like the rep. I want to be the yearbook lady. I can tell you, Herf Jones. Herf, I know Herf Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the Herf Jones representative. I thought that that was the coolest. Herf Jones lady. Yeah, I don't know what her title was. I was 17. I wasn't paying that much attention. Yeah, but you saw that, you're like, that's it. Yeah, oh, that's a cool job. Sometimes I've seen designers because of the, like what you need to learn how to do could translate into like gallery art, like that type of stuff. Have you ever thought about doing that stuff? I took fine art classes in college. I remember the first art class where the nude model was, and that was like amazingly bizarre to me because I went to a private Christian school and I, you know, the fact that there was like naked people in the room was just, wow. I don't know what I would do even now if I would be like 12 years old. But I had like the portfolio thing and charcoal drawings and the whole bit. So yeah, I did art a little bit. I like to do, I wanted to do magazines and the advertising thing was I just knew that was in my blood. But you had to do those art classes and then while I hate to date myself, but the computer was like in a, you know, clean room. It was this giant IBM thing. So, you know, what I do now didn't even exist when I was in college. You talked a lot about, or little about, but it made sense. I'm building your business. It was focused on community. So in the space that you were in, the people that you were working with in that area, where you live, that's the physical community. I know that the WordPress community is like a pretty big deal. Like they're pretty tight, right? Yeah, and we have a really big community in Seattle. There's like 2,800 members in the WordPress meetup. Wow. I co-host WordPress Fundamentals once a month in Seattle with another developer. And we just help people that are trying to figure out WordPress for the first time. Yeah, and then WordCamps. WordCamps, I love WordCamps. How would you describe WordCamps? Like my mom that has no idea what it is. What would you say? WordCamp is like a seminar for people who use WordPress. And it's not only people who build websites, it's people who use them. Yes. And like big agencies. Yeah. And companies like GoDaddy. Yeah. And you know, everybody comes together and learns about WordPress and running a WordPress business. Yeah. And then we go to karaoke. You've got to go into like a tiny little dive bar in Missouri. You just don't get those experiences that much. That was the best karaoke bar I'd ever been to. It was awesome. There was a bride doing karaoke. What? In her wedding dress. And they were like the whole crowd. It was like a concert. It was so cool. That's amazing. So look what you get for working with WordPress. You're going to see a bride, dive bar, peanuts on the floor, singing her heart out. That's how I roll. Thank you for being on the show. Oh, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. How are you feeling? Good. I'm feeling good. One more toast. Thank you. Oh, Netscape. Netscape. What else? What else? What's an old one? Ask Jeeves. I don't know. Ask Jeeves. Let's do that. Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves. That's great. Thanks, Kami, for being on the show. That was great. And I've been drinking, so I'm slurring my speech a little bit. If you want to see more people like Kami on the show, then subscribe. Ring the bell. Do that type of stuff. And we'll show up in your YouTube, whatever. And if you have a f*** of your own and you want to be on the show, go to fups.com. We would love to have you.