We’re Back! Our Intentions and Goals for 2019 | EP 449

We’re Back! Our intentions and goals for fresh start in 2019

1. Happy New Year! We took some time off, but we’re back. 00:40
   • You can look forward to the consistency that we’ve had in the past.
   • New recording process.
   • Wpthepodcast.com migration.
   • Wpthepodcast.com will be brought into wpgears.com, and you’ll be able to go to one place for everything that we offer.
2. Future episodes and YouTube Lives 05:21

We’d love to hear what your goals are and things that you’re focusing for 2019 as well, so don’t hesitate to comment.

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:26 David Blackmon: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast, brought to you by WP Gears. I’m David Blackmon.

00:35 Tim Strifler: And I’m Tim Strifler.

00:38 David Blackmon: We’re back, Tim!

00:40 Tim Strifler: Yes, we are back. It’s 2019. Happy New Year, everyone. We took some time off, but we’re back, and we’re back to the daily episodes too, so you can look forward to that.

00:51 David Blackmon: Yeah, we’re super excited. We do apologize for the long break, but you know, I think it’s going to be much better for our podcast listeners in the long run. Tim got sick. I got sick. We wanted to take a little bit of time off through the holidays, which we did. We weren’t expecting me to come down with an abscessed tooth one week when we were supposed to start back, and then Tim come down with a massive, just a stomach virus bug that totally crippled him for the following week.

01:23 Tim Strifler: Yeah.

01:25 David Blackmon: And I guess things just happen the way they’re supposed to happen, but bottom line is, is we are super excited to be back. And today we’re going to talk about our intentions and goals for 2019, so we’re going to let you know what we’ve got coming up for the podcast, what we’re super excited about, what we’re going to be focusing on and working on in 2019, and you know what? We’d love to hear what your goals and things that you’re focusing for 2019 as well, so don’t hesitate to comment. Come on over to our website, wpgears.com, wpthepodcast.com, and also on wherever you listen to us. Leave us a comment, leave us a review, and let us know what your goals are and stuff.

02:10 Tim Strifler: Yeah, absolutely. So first things first, goals for the podcast. Well, obviously, we already mentioned it. We’re back with the daily episodes, and we don’t plan on taking any more breaks any time in the future, so you can look forward to the consistency that we’ve had in the past.

02:26 Tim Strifler: One thing that we had talked about, and this is something that we always have intended to do. It doesn’t always happen this way. And this is really more of a internal thing. You’re not going to really see anything, but David and I, we typically do batch recording. And so our goal has always been to do weekly recordings where we record once a week, and then we record all the episodes. And we kind of got away from that this past year, to where we were recording a couple … every other day.

02:57 Tim Strifler: And so we’re trying to get back into the routine of every Monday, we record a bunch at once. And again, it’s not going to really affect the daily. They still come out every single day, but that’s something kind of internally that we plan to do, and that’s going to help with the consistency as well as the quality. We’ll continue to be able to up the quality, because we’ll have a consistent process and plan that we do week after week.

03:24 David Blackmon: Another big thing that we’re going to do for the podcast this year is much, much long overdue, but it’s a process. When you have 450 episodes, that’s a lot of episodes. We’re going to take wpthepodcast.com and hopefully, finally migrate it in Q1 of this year, at the latest, Q2.

03:48 David Blackmon: So we’ll bring everything together, wpthepodcast.com will be brought into wpgears.com, and you’ll be able to go to one place for everything that we offer, as opposed to having to go to multiple places for the time being. So getting all of those things indexed over, getting it transferred to wpgears.com is another goal and intention that we’re going to do for 2019.

04:13 Tim Strifler: Yeah, and we also plan on extending the reach in terms of the additional platforms we’re on, obviously, iTunes. We’re on Google Play. We’re on Stitcher. But we plan on … We’ve been trying to get onto Spotify. When we initially applied, it was right when they brought podcasts to Spotify, and they were very selective. And it wasn’t even that we got denied. We just never heard back, and so we’ll hopefully get that. Our other podcast, Divi Chat, we are on Spotify, so we know it’s possible to get on there, so we’re going to get WP The Podcast on there. Personally, I love Spotify for music, and I’m glad that they’re expanding that to podcasts. That way, I can kind of listen to everything within one app, which is pretty cool. And so hopefully, we’ll be able to get on there. So if you’re a Spotify user, you can listen to us there as well.

05:02 David Blackmon: And I’m going to put Tim and I on the spot, because we’ve talked about doing this last year, and I really think that it would be valuable for our listeners and stuff, and good for us from a business standpoint, as far as growing our brand and expanding our reach and stuff.

05:21 David Blackmon: You know, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and Tim and I have talked about and discussed doing once a week or bimonthly, twice a month, YouTube Lives. You know, recording a couple of episodes YouTube Live, and talking that way and allowing you to come, and interact, and engage with us and stuff. So I really want to. I think that would be really good for you guys, our listeners, to come and engage with us and stuff and interact with us. And for us, from a search perspective, I think it would help more people find us and stuff, because YouTube is such a large search engine and stuff, and hey, it would be fun. I think it’d be fun.

06:09 Tim Strifler: Yeah, absolutely. And doing it live is a lot of fun. We do it with Divi Chat every week. David and I do our weekly coaching calls for our Divi Business Expert students, and it’s a lot fun getting that engagement and interaction from listeners, students, et cetera, and so I’d love to kind of bring what we enjoy about that into our WP The Podcast community.

06:32 David Blackmon: Absolutely. And we are not going to dive into our personal goals and stuff here, because in a few episodes, episode 451 that’ll be coming up in couple of days, Tim and I are going to go into more of our personal growth plans and intentions for 2019, and our separate businesses. You know, Divi Life, Divi Space, Aspen Grove Studios, and WP Gears. We’re going to talk to you about what we’re going to be doing in 2019 on those platforms as well.

07:05 David Blackmon: So as far as WP The Podcast goes, we’re back. We’ve got some super exciting things planned for this year. Tim and I were fortunate enough to meet a few of our listeners this past year, and I’ve got to say that was probably some of the most … best highlights for me, from a WP The Podcast perspective. It was really great meeting listeners to the podcast. Keegan Lanier’s one of them. I got to meet him in person. Tim hasn’t met Keegan yet, but he will. Keegan will probably attend some WordCamps this year, so I would love to do more of a meetup, maybe even this year plan like a meetup at a WordCamp somewhere, and do a meetup and stuff, and meet some of our listeners and stuff. So there you go, Tim. I just added another one for us to do in 2019.

08:02 Tim Strifler That’s awesome, yeah. One more thing I do want to add that we plan on doing is bringing on more guests. We’ve only had two guests. Most recently, we had the guys from WPMU DEV’s new podcast, Hello WP. That was awesome getting to meet them, and we definitely encourage you to go back. It’s only a few episodes ago since we took that time off, but go check that out. But yeah, we plan on adding more guests onto the show, so let us know. Reach out. Tell us if there’s anyone specific in the WordPress or marketing space that you think would be a really good fit, and we will do our best to get them on the show, do a few episodes long of adding value and adding value to you, the listeners.

08:47 David Blackmon: Well, I am super excited. Boom! Tim, it’s good to be back.

08:52 Tim Strifler: It is great to be back, absolutely.

08:54 David Blackmon: It is great to be back. I’m super excited. I feel rejuvenated, revived, just ready to go for 2019, and tackle it and stuff. Tim and I have been doing some things behind the scene in 2019, but I feel like this is the official kickoff of 2019 with WP The Podcast and everything, so yeah. Got some great episodes coming up this week. Tomorrow, we’re going to talk about the most effective things you can do for growing a WordPress product business.

09:27 David Blackmon: Tim, until tomorrow. We’ll see you then.

09:31 Tim Strifler: Take care. Bye bye.