Amy:
Welcome to Women in WP. A bimonthly podcast about women who blog, design develop and more in the WordPress community.
Tracy:
Hi Women in WP listeners, this is Tracy with a quick message from our sponsor WPRemote. WPRemote is a dedicated care plan platform that will help fuel your agency’s growth with maintenance care plans for your client’s websites. WPRemote provides an automated workflow for you to manage multiple sites from one central dashboard. With one click updates, incremental backups, automated malware scans, firewall, uptime monitor and more. WPRemote is created by the same great folks behind BlogVault, Melcare and Migrate Guru. Save time, increase your revenue and make your clients happy by trying WPRemote today for free. Learn more at wpremote.com/womeninwp. And now onto our show.
Amy:
Hi, welcome to Women in WP. I’m Amy Masson.
Tracy:
I’m Tracy Apps.
Allie:
I’m Allie Nimmons.
Tracy:
And our guest today-
Amanda:
I’m Amanda Gorman.
Amy:
Our guest today is Amanda Gorman. Amanda’s the Customer Success Manager in impress.org and GiveWP, as well as a freelance SEO consultant who also built and manages her yoga studios WordPress website. Welcome Amanda.
Amanda:
Thank you so much for having me.
Amy:
And we like to start off our episodes by asking our guests how they got into WordPress, so how did you get started?
Amanda:
I got started almost 10 years ago because my parents owned several businesses at the time, a bar and a restaurant, and they were looking to start websites. And I was dabbling in that and Adobe Muse, of all things, and I knew Michelle Ames, Michelle Frechette now, and she introduced me to WordPress and it changed my life. It allowed me to create those websites for my parents and from there, I was able to show those as kind of a template of what I could create for others in my community. So I ended up working with a lot of different businesses, and trying to find a niche, trying to find what my specialty was. Making a lot of mistakes along the way, but it’s led me here now, building websites, mostly just on the side, and focusing my efforts in my SEO expertise, as well as my efforts at GiveWP helping people raise money online.
Amy:
That’s awesome. I know you’re doing Customer Success at those organizations. So what do you do, what does that mean?
Amanda:
Yeah, so customer success is building… the way I like to represent it is that it’s a bridge between the developers and the customers. So being able to communicate the customer’s needs, really effectively understanding with a really empathetic approach of what the customers are actually looking for in a product and specifically with GiveWP, what they’re looking for to help their charities be more successful. To be more efficient in their efforts because they’re working with a lot of volunteers and limited budgets, and limited [inaudible 00:03:29] time, where they have to actually implement something.
Amanda:
Or if they do have bigger projects, they want to kind of be able to create something that’s custom to their own unique needs. That a lot of platforms out there are not serving, because there’s a lot of opportunity for bigger organizations to put a lot of money into a software, but the smaller organizations are kind of left wondering how they can make their big events work, especially now in the age of online events being so predominant.
Amanda:
So yeah, being able to communicate those needs to our developers is continuing to be really, really important and where I find a lot of value. Because we’re able to really bridge that gap, make things more clear as we are developing and maybe avoid some pitfalls. If we are looking at a new product, we can kind of be really privy to what customers have already asked about and be able to communicate with them with integrity and with as much knowledge as we can, as those things are released as to what is going to actually work and what’s not.
Tracy:
That’s awesome. Being user experienced design, that’s pretty much what I do as well, when it comes to product design. And it’s so crucial, people don’t realize how instrumental that position and that bridge between the audience and the product. It really is, that link is so crucial. How long have you been at GiveWP, how long have you been working there?
Amanda:
It’ll be three years on March 1st. I still can’t believe it’s been that long.
Tracy:
I’ve been watching, because I remember Give many years ago. Even just in the time that you’ve been there, how have you seen the product grow and improve for your customers?
Amanda:
Yeah, so much, I mean, there’s been so many big changes and we’re going to be seeing so many just this year. I know a lot is on deck from being rolled out, which I’m super excited for. But just this ability to develop this department, watching Michelle develop this department specifically and just being right underneath her and being able to be clued in on these conversations, it really has shown me how all the other departments can work together as well and how we’re all clued in on that development piece.
Amanda:
So I definitely have witnessed the shift of maybe where development with kind of having a conversation to just on their own. Now those channels are kind of being opened up more, where they’re more feedback is being requested from other departments, not just support of who’s communicating with customers, but from the customer success department now, because we’re having those phone calls where we’re actually communicating with people that are brand new to the plugin or that are agencies that are very highly experienced and wanting to do all sorts of crazy things. But those conversations are kind of a little more nuanced and give a little bit more context of where people’s idea of what they want in the future is going, maybe more than you would see in an email.
Allie:
I wonder if you can, and you just sort of teased things that are coming up in the future. Is there anything that you can tell us about what we can expect to see out of GiveWP in the next year? I know you can’t probably give too much away, but any hints, any small bits of info that you can give?
Amanda:
Yeah. I mean, I think there’s two big things and they kind of tie together and this is definitely communicated on our feedback system with GiveWP. This is going to be somewhere that you can see this progress happening on the web. So it’s not too much of a secret, but peer-to-peer fundraising is definitely going to be on deck. I don’t know the timeline for when that’s going to be released, but I know that it is something that is in development and is being really focused on because we get a lot of requests for that. And it’s definitely going to open up ourselves to a lot of other opportunities for nonprofits that are looking to build those bigger campaigns.
Amanda:
And more sooner than that, I know that our donor experience is going to change a bit in terms of how donors are coming to a nonprofit website and viewing their donation history and the actual account details, their name, their contact information that’s associated with their donation records. That’s going to get a whole new makeover. Currently the donation history and subscription pages are separate. That’s going to be all brought into one user experience. So I’m really excited to see that, because it’s going to make things a lot more streamlined for donors coming to those websites and for the administrators of those websites using GiveWP to understand how their donors are experiencing things on their website.
Allie:
I love to hear that, because I feel like a lot of product companies can get really caught up in developing new things, and releasing new sparkly features. And I think it’s really important sometimes for companies, not just GiveWP but all product companies to kind of look at the way that things are currently built and say, “Okay, is this as good as it could be? Maybe we should need to invest some time to go back and make this better.” Rather than just sort of saying, “Oh, well this is perfect. We’re going to build new, better stuff on top of it.” So I love hearing that there is new stuff coming with peer-to-peer, but also revamping the existing kind of system to make it more streamlined. I love that approach. I’m really glad to hear that.
Amanda:
Absolutely. [crosstalk 00:09:15]. I those are strong foundations.
Allie:
Absolutely. I was going to say, full disclosure I used to work with you at GiveWP. And so I know that product really well and so I’m literally seeing in my head like, “Oh, I understand the context of what you’re talking about.” And that’s really exciting as someone who does know that product.
Amy:
I’ve only used on them at a couple sites, I really have liked it, but I don’t know it as well as either of you.
Tracy:
And one thing, especially because I’ve done some work with nonprofit stuff and not only just freelance, but then I worked at an agency that focused mainly on nonprofits. I think, just as you’re talking, I think a lot of times people don’t realize how much there is when it comes to donations and how many more layers there are to nonprofits and running on donations. I get, “Well, you just put a button on the website.” It’s so much more than that. And just as you were explaining, do you end up having to educate people on that or is that just something that just ends up coming because people come and say, “Oh, it has all these other features.” Or is that something that’s an education piece?
Amanda:
Yeah, it’s so subjective because there’s so many different types of people that are coming to GiveWP, because of the nature of the product, it is really accessible for folks that are new to WordPress or that are very experienced. So I see kind of all of that range, but it’s so true and that there’s a lot of education that’s happening. And luckily, because our website is so awesome with information and our blog is full of data and information and tips and tutorials. Those that are looking to get educated can get educated even before they come and schedule a demo with me or one of our other team members on the customer success team.
Amanda:
But there are a lot of folks that are just like, “Oh, I heard of GiveWP, because I searched in Google,” and, “Here we go, we’re scheduling a demo.” So I get both of those and I love having both because the conversation can go in different ways with either of those types of people. So I do like the folks that are a little more researched because we can get into the nitty gritty of really developing some complex campaigns, if that’s the route they’re taking. But I also love just getting people onboarded, just get a donation button up and running and they can see how powerful Give is in just a few short hours of getting set up.
Allie:
You mentioned a little bit before about online events and things like that being a challenge. What do you think is one of the biggest challenges that nonprofits are facing at the moment? What kinds of things are you hearing people talk about as far as having to shift to a COVID world?
Amanda:
I think budget is coming up a lot and I’m grateful to talk to a lot of people that are still renewing their subscription with GiveWP, because they do see the value in it. And they’re knowing that by maintaining their forums they’re going to be maintaining that donation process and experience, which of course is crucial to their sustaining throughout this, 2021 now. I definitely am seeing a lot of kind of maybe roadblocks of how they’re going to shift from a event that they would do in person, what that looks like now online. There’s a lot of creativity out there and I’ve seen a lot of awesome use cases with the gift plugin as well as with combinated efforts with other plugins and streaming services.
Amanda:
And just being able to combine different tools to create really unique events online or just really simple events. But I think that nonprofits maybe are a little discouraged at first before they can see what opportunities are available. So I’m glad that we have a lot of resources on our blog about that, about what those online events can look like. So it kind of opens up their mind to what is possible, because I kind of think that some folks that I’m reaching are, “We’re just not seeing very many donations right now,” or, “We’re not able to run this event right now.” And I’m hopeful to see more folks shifting or pivoting to what they can do versus what they can’t do.
Amy:
It’s really easy to get caught up in the, “I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” I struggle with that myself.
Tracy:
Yoga studio. Do you do yoga, you have a yoga studio?
Amanda:
That’s the other hat.
Tracy:
Yeah. I’m always fascinated, especially with multiple hats, because I wear multiple ones as well. So I’d love to shift and just hear more about that as well.
Amanda:
Yeah. Yeah.
Amy:
And if everybody could please take a moment to get into their favorite pose. So we can get-
Tracy:
Is this tree pose? [crosstalk 00:14:07]
Amanda:
Take a big deep breath with me. Nice big, deep breath in through the nose. Yeah. Shifting, huh? I’ve tried to wear one hat, it just doesn’t work. I tried to pick like two hats, it doesn’t work. I’m just a multifaceted person as we all are, but especially in my career, I just can’t pick. So I do own and co-own a yoga studio with three other women. So it’s all four of us together Now: Yoga & Movement. It was a physical space here in Rochester, New York. But it moved virtual when the pandemic hit, a few short weeks after that we lost our space. I think it was two months after the pandemic started because we couldn’t maintain the rent.
Amanda:
Our space was only able to fit 10 people so there was no way we were going to be able to social distance with classes and follow protocol. So we did have some outdoor classes last summer, which was great and I hope to do that again this year, with everything that’s going on. Hopefully that will be something we can do. But being a all virtual studio now has really presented its own challenges. I’ve utilized Give for our studio and some in-between time, when we weren’t charging anything for classes, for virtual classes while people were kind of adjusting to the new norm. But now I’m happy to say that we are taking credits as normal and we are treating our classes just as they were in person because they are just as good.
Tracy:
Love it.
Amy:
Yeah. I’ve had a number of yoga studio clients that I’ve helped move as much online as possible and they’re making it work. It can’t be easy and I find myself frequently and I’m sure a lot of people have found this, if your job has not suffered because of COVID, the guilt, I feel guilt because I haven’t had to really pivot or do anything different and my job has not changed at all. But I struggled with the fact that I know so many other people have.
Amanda:
Yeah. I feel really grateful that I do have my full-time gig at Give because I don’t have that super pressure on the yoga studio. I can still treat that as kind of a passion project as the other women of the studio, it’s all kind of a side gig for us, which is good and bad, because it just has these other pressures outside of what our normal day-to-day is, just to maintain things. But that keeps me going with the yoga studio, definitely during these hard times because I’m not putting that financial burden on it. And I’m very grateful for that privilege.
Allie:
I just want to know how you do it. You have your full-time job at Give, you’re freelancing SEO, you have the yoga studio. I know that you recently, I guess not too recently, just had a new little person enter your life. I’m just amazed by how you are juggling all of these things, so gracefully. Kudos to you.
Amanda:
Gracefully. Yeah, so gracefully.
Allie:
At least from the outside, it appears graceful.
Amanda:
Well, thank you. Thank you. I mean, I’ve definitely let some aspects go. I’ve definitely prioritized, Give of course and the studio. And my SEO is there, it’s just, I’ve let it go a little bit this last year because my baby [Ronin 00:17:43] is definitely that bigger, hole in my life, that’s the big gap that’s been filled of my priorities, of what I thought was important. So he’s kind of at that top there now. But that kind of shifts everything else down and I realized I can take on projects, I can say no to things more, way more than I ever used to. And I can be honest with myself and with my clients of, “I can help you, but it’s going to take me this period of time. I’m going to need a lot of buffer. This is what I’ve got going on, it’s not a full-time thing for me.
Amanda:
And that’s why I shifted my SEO efforts specifically and to just really education, keeping myself in the know of what’s on the up and up, because I just find that super fascinating. And donating my time to nonprofits that I care about. Some of them I’ve met through Give, some of them are just local and they’re really few right now just, maybe two or three that I’m kind of touching base with. And just kind of volunteering my time is working in that regard because that takes a lot of that obligation off my plates and they understand where I’m at, until I’m at least ready to donate or to provide more paid services when life shifts again, as it will.
Tracy:
I like that, because I mean that’s… it took me so many years to learn how to say no. And my career just got better because of it, just knowing our limits and I know especially 2020 really just kind of forced us into our limits because we just… I did a talk on Wordfast live, just, what was it, last week or something like that. And so I did all this research about the brain chemistry, how our brain chemistry was changed basically from living in a constant trauma state as a shared community into the world.
Tracy:
So of course, I’m thinking about that. That, especially as in the digital world that we are still working and we’re doing this, it’s taking a toll on us. And so getting that to like, “No, this is my limits, because right now my brain is not supplying my prefrontal cortex with the resource it needs to be able to do this. I am worried about a bear eating me in the forest.” That’s how your brains works, so that’s pretty great. So you’ve been doing all these different things. I feel the same. Do you feel like your stuff at Give helps with your yoga studio, and obviously SEO and this… How have you benefited from that kind of multitasking, but limiting it and focusing on what you need to?
Amanda:
Yeah. And I’m only looking for the thread of how my different endeavors are connecting and it sometimes is subtle and sometimes is not as obvious. And that’s why I’ve kind of put pressure on myself to choose a hat, because it all seems so random. But it’s not, it’s just where my life has led me. It’s just the different choices I’ve made to land where I am right now. And an example that comes to mind is that I was working at a law firm before Give, and with these two seems so seemingly different, but my customer service experience, talking on the phone, dealing with stressful situations, helping customers navigate situations that they’re unfamiliar with, translated so well into being a Customer Success Manager at Give in ways that I never would have understood at that time when I first made that transition and when Give gave me the opportunity.
Amanda:
And I’m noticing those threads more and more, especially as time goes on and establishing myself here that I can use the tool of the plugin Give and my resources and all of the knowledge that I’m gaining there to help people in my community and the yoga community specifically, just for folks that are maybe looking to fundraise, or are looking to support their yoga studio for whatever means that they might have. Or I might notice something on Facebook that another studio’s trying to create an event for, and I’ll just kind of reach out and make those connections. And those are really where the threads are, is the relationship that I’m building because of my skillset. And myself managing the studio’s website presents a lot of opportunity as well, because others might ask us how we do certain things on the website or how we’re shifting things to the virtual space. So there’s just a lot of opportunity there that kind of crosses over.
Tracy:
And also just in practice. I’ve done this, it’s more, instead of just learning a theory, you’re putting it into actual practice and using it in life. I think that’s really cool.
Amy:
I think there’s overlap in so many fields where people just don’t realize that it exists and your experience, learning it’s not just about that specific niche. It’s about the skills you use to manage all of those, and then end up parlaying into so many different fields, it’s everything’s tangential. Is that a word?
Allie:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my husband teaches fourth grade and he always talks about the fact that people don’t think about, when you’re in school and you’re learning how to write, or writing essays, if you write an essay on the French Revolution, the point is not for you to memorize information about the French Revolution. The point is for you to learn how to write an essay, and to make an argument, and to do research and present that research in an intelligent way. But the emphasis is always on like, “Well, what year did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah happen?”
Allie:
And I think, once we’re adults it kind of hits us that like, “Oh, a lot of the things…” I write essays all day, every day, like what is SEO or a lot of on-page SEO is a lot of stuff you learn when you write essays of like organizing information and citing sources and all of these different things. And I think once you realize that a lot of the stuff you’ve learned conceptually can be applied in the future, I think it makes things so much easier.
Amy:
I agree. I was a teacher before I worked in WordPress, before I worked in web design. And I find that a lot of my skills, a lot of the skills that I use in my job now come from my time as a teacher.
Tracy:
Teaching gets such a bad rep. It’s like, “Oh, well, if you can’t do it, then you teach.” “Well, no, if you’re really good at it, you teach.” And that affects so many things. Like I can even imagine yoga helping with customer service and that being able to… because especially with technology, people are frustrated because they don’t understand it. So if you can teach and guide someone through that, you’re going to succeed at whatever job you want to do.
Amanda:
Yeah. I was definitely going to speak to the yoga being just my own practice and my teaching is definitely a foundation, that solid rock to stand on for anything else that I’m doing. Just that ability to be present with my needs and I can then be a better person, a better communicator, a better co-worker, a better just human all around in my day-to-day interactions. And I think we all find our ways towards that. Yoga isn’t just a physical practice, it’s a practice that can show up in a multitude of ways. And I’m sure that everybody has their own ways of finding that, I know they do.
Amanda:
So it’s just that focus and that intention, it does help me. It brings me back to myself when I am facing a challenge with a challenging customer. And there is definitely, I know that you were probably feeling it as well, the tension out there. Just with the frustration, and the impatience, and the assumption that things are going to go wrong. I think that’s part of that trauma response of, “I’m just going to be prepared for the worst.” So expecting that people aren’t going to help you or that you’re at a loss before you even begin, that’s definitely something, is a hurdle to work over, but you can’t take it personally on the other end of it. As the customer support person, you’ve got to be responsive and not reactive.
Tracy:
Yeah. Any little tidbits, tools that you use that you can share with all of us to be more mindful in practice?
Amanda:
Yeah. I mean, I think the foundation really making sure you’re taken care of, I always say first, drink water, eat food, move your body. Because I think especially as remote workers, we are not doing that enough. And I know for myself, I’m not doing it enough most often, if I’m not reminding myself. Or challenging myself to get up and move or take a break and actually chug that water that I poured for myself two hours ago. Just these little reminders of actually taking care of yourself, maybe a post-it note or a journal entry that’s nearby that you can just be reminded of what’s important. So that foundation is of course key.
Amanda:
But then when you’re actually in a situation, maybe just grounding your feet down on the floor. Maybe if you’re short like me and they’re not touching and you need to actually ground down or stand up and feel your way on the floor, lay on the floor. I love just going and laying on the floor. Being grounded though, physically really helps me to be in this moment. And then obviously breathing as someone’s talking. So listening, you’re not actively not listening to somebody as you’re focusing on your breath, but you can do two things at the same time, right? So listen to what somebody’s problem might be, especially if they like to share with you quite a bit of detail about what that issue is that they’re experiencing.
Amanda:
And try not to take any of it personally and maybe take a breath, or two, or three before you actually say something back. Because I find that I tend to jump like, “Oh, I know the answer to that. I can help you. I can help you.” Before actually hearing what they’re trying to communicate to me. And it might not just be that they want responded to right away. They want to share their pain or their frustration. They want to be heard in that first, and then they want the fix.
Amy:
That’s such good advice.
Tracy:
It is really good advice, because I’m a fixer. I do the jump out of… yep, breathe.
Amy:
I’m a fixer. Definitely.
Amanda:
Yeah. Me too.
Amy:
So when you’re wearing your SEO hat, which I know you said you’ve kind of made that a smaller hat, but what kinds of projects are you working on? Is there a specific niche you’re working on or are you… just tell me more.
Amanda:
Yeah. Yeah. I was working with a lot of local folks for a while. A lot of food trucks actually, because I have a friend that owns a food truck locally, and she kind of put me in touch with a lot of other food trucks in the area and that kind of fizzled out over the last few years, but that’s kind of where I was, just in the food service industry. I was helping a lot of those folks, social and SEO efforts. And then I dabbled in some more wellness businesses as I got into yoga studio, about three, four years ago. So that really brought me into like, I worked with a life coach, and then I worked with another wellness business. So I love those kinds of industries.
Amanda:
And right now specifically, I’m trying to work with more nonprofits in the capacity that I have available or just in short-term projects to get them towards a specific goal. And then maybe looking towards a long-term process, but just getting them to dip their toes into what an SEO process might look like so that I can teach them how to do it themselves. That’s really where I’ve been going, because I don’t necessarily want to be somebody’s go-to all the time because I don’t have the capacity for that, always feeding back and emailing back and forth.
Amanda:
So I’d rather, if there’s a volunteer on their team that wants to learn SEO, I want to teach them, I want to coach them. I want to guide them towards what their specific goals are, because I find that a lot of folks want me to write their blogs, and they want me to do their content, and they want me to do all these things in their voice, but I don’t know their brand, I don’t know their voice. I’m not in it enough to do that for them. And they don’t have the money to pay me to do that for them, so I would much rather teach somebody that’s already on their team to do that successfully because they know the brand really well.
Amy:
I find that a lot of times with SEO, people want you to… they want to ask a lot of questions and get all the information. Then they won’t take the next steps to actually putting that into practice on their own. Once they ask all the questions and then they want you to do it. And I always tell people, “I’m not an expert in your business. You’re an expert in your business and it’s your voice that people are going to respond to, not mine.” But I haven’t been able to find a lot of people that are willing to take it on, on their own.
Tracy:
I feel like people think that SEO is like a pill they can take. Like, “Check. I did the SEO thing. I’m on the Google.”
Allie:
The Google.
Amanda:
So true. It’s been a struggle for me to find somebody that does want to actually take that effort because I have started those relationships quite a bit, of folks that seem interested and maybe have a volunteer or somebody on their staff that does want to take the effort. But then I provide information like their keyword research, or I provide them with the rubric of what they would need to take the next step of writing content and then it just come to fruition. And you’ve got to budget for that, plan for it, if you really want it to be a priority.
Allie:
I feel a lot of people just get afraid of writing also, sitting down and writing content. I mean, you hear of professional authors who talk about sitting down in front of a blank document and writing one sentence and giving up. I can only imagine if you’re a taco truck owner and suddenly someone’s telling you like, “Okay, go back to 10th grade and write an essay about why your taco truck is awesome.” It’s like, “I don’t want to do that. I want to do taco truck stuff.” I was always that nerd that loved writing essays, I would actually write my friend’s essays for them when I would finish mine. And I would do other people’s assignments for them.
Amy:
Were you doing that for free, or were you getting paid?
Allie:
No, I just thought it was fun and I was [inaudible 00:33:22] essay early. So I’d be like, “Yeah, I’ll finish your essay for you,” or, “I’ll proofread it,” or whatever. So I was always that person, but I definitely know that-
Tracy:
You were a popular kid, weren’t you?
Allie:
Define popular.
Tracy:
Guys trust me, I’ve made websites for fun.
Allie:
But yeah, I can only imagine if that’s not your thing. It’s like if somebody gave me a crash course in PHP development, and then they were like, “Okay, here’s a blank document, write some codes.” It’s like, “I Don’t want do that.”
Amy:
You know who’s really nailed it though, are the recipe bloggers.
Allie:
Don’t even get me started, Amy. Don’t even get me started.
Amy:
You cannot just get to a recipe unless you read 1100 boards on somebody’s life story, but-
Tracy:
And their purple yoga pants that they wore for the first time.
Allie:
And there are 18 ads. Did you all see, I tweeted like last week I went to a recipe site and I could see one sentence of content on my phone and the entire rest of my screen was ads.
Tracy:
Wow.
Allie:
And I was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Amy:
But at least many of them have put the jump to recipe button, which makes my life a lot easier.
Tracy:
You don’t want to hear about the stormy day that she couldn’t find a parking spot at the whole foods.
Amy:
Some days I do, but if I’m in the kitchen with a glass of wine and a skillet, I just need to get to the recipe.
Allie:
Yeah. Seriously.
Amanda:
It kills me that a lot of the recipes I follow are mommy blogs, and I’m like, “How do you for this when you have a billion kids?” I don’t understand.
Tracy:
I had a friend like that and she was a single mother. And she would make these elaborate dishes and I was like, “What, how do you do this?” And then she was doing this home improvement. She’s like, “Here’s me remodeling the kitchen.” I’m like, “Where do you get this time?” But I thought it was great because I’ve heard that with kids, they’re like, “Oh, well, they’re picky eaters.” I was a picky eater, but I wasn’t given a lot of options and whatever. She was like, “Make these elaborate dishes.” And she’s like, “This is what you’re eating.” And he would just learn and he loved it, and then he would then help cook. And this kid cooking all of these organic [inaudible 00:35:54] and like, “I want a kid to cook for me.”
Amy:
So now I think we need to start the Women in WP recipe blog.
Tracy:
Oh, God.
Allie:
Where it’s just ingredients and steps and nothing else.
Amy:
Yes.
Amanda:
Yes, please.
Tracy:
Actually I have an app that it just strips the recipe portion from that.
Allie:
That’s awesome.
Tracy:
Because I really don’t care about the purple yoga pants.
Amy:
Have you seen there’s this website and it’s, language alert, whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com?
Allie:
Yes.
Tracy:
I need that.
Amy:
Go to it and it and it just gives you a recipe and then you have a choice of either saying, “Yes, I want this.” Or, “No, I don’t like this.” And it gives you a different one and it’s just all the garbage is gone.
Allie:
What I really love are those sites where you can just put in like the six random items that you have in your pantry and it’ll give you a recipe that you can make. In college, oh man, that was-
Amy:
You made recipes in college?
Allie:
I mean, it was cheaper to cook than to eat out. So I would try to dO basic groceries, rice beans, a thing this big of frozen chicken and they’d be like, “All right, I got to figure this out.”
Amy:
I mean, I ate ramen and frozen chicken pot pies.
Tracy:
I did the same.
Amy:
Remember like the 75 cent little frozen chicken pot pies?
Tracy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Allie:
Oh. So for dinner, I’m having crab and salmon cakes. Oh, wait, that actually sounds really good.
Amy:
Is that on the whatthefuckshouldihavefordinner.com?
Allie:
Yeah. What to the Google and I found it.
Amy:
The Google will never steer you wrong.
Tracy:
[crosstalk 00:37:28]. On Twitter, my friend runs the the account Pretentious Dish.
Amy:
No, I haven’t heard of that.
Allie:
That’s a really funny name though.
Tracy:
I think it’s [inaudible 00:37:50], if I can spell that right.
Amy:
While we’re all looking at… taking a break to look at recipes, I wanted to ask Amanda, is there any specific non-profit that you want to just give a plug to that people should just really go take a look at?
Amanda:
That’s a great question. Yoga 4 A Good Hood is a local nonprofit here in Rochester. I haven’t worked with them specifically, but I donate to them and I love them, and they are providing free yoga or donated yoga trainings for disadvantaged communities here in Rochester. And Imani is one of the leader of Yoga 4 A Good Hood and she also owns a yoga studio here Rochester and the work that she’s doing in the community is absolutely incredible and the program that they’re running is really amazing. They do virtual classes as well with their yoga teacher trainings. So the folks that are getting those program benefits are able to then teach virtually to anybody on the web now. So I think that that’s really cool to be able to check out.
Tracy:
Nice.
Amy:
We’ll include that in the show notes.
Tracy:
That’s much more useful than Pretentious Dish, where you get like, [inaudible 00:39:06] braised beer tartare carrot essence-
Allie:
Carrot essence?
Tracy:
Arugula. It’s just basically a generator of names, sweet corn, green tomato aioli.
Allie:
I’m stuck on carrot essence. Is it like the vibes-
Tracy:
The carrot essence [crosstalk 00:39:24], something, I can’t even pronounce half of the words.
Amy:
I mean, if the carrots don’t have a pure soul, you can’t get the essence.
Allie:
That’s what I’m saying. You have to find a pure carrot.
Amy:
Only the purest carrots for this recipe.
Allie:
Sounds like an episode of VeggieTales. You have to find a pure carrot essence.
Amy:
Yeah. Those naughty carrots, we are not cooking.
Allie:
[inaudible 00:39:51]. Amanda?
Amanda:
[inaudible 00:39:53] carrots.
Allie:
We need to focus. You mentioned non-profits that have been doing really creative things with Give in light of the world falling apart. Can you give us an example of a creative pivot that an organization has taken or a creative way that they used Give that you hadn’t seen before?
Amanda:
Yeah. Yeah. We just did a Give live about this one. It’s Play2Fund, they are a website play2fund.com. They do streamed live music events on their website and they just allow creators to start a campaign on their website for free and basically, they put a date of when that event’s going to be, when the live stream is going to happen. And then the recordings are all saved on the website as well. I believe the recordings are just through YouTube, but it’s a really awesome platform that has incorporated a membership feature as well as the GiveWP plugin for folks to donate while they’re watching the show. So that was a really, really cool use case that came out of the pandemic.
Allie:
Very cool.
Tracy:
Nice. That’s cool. Sounds like a really kind of cool platform. I used to do house concerts in my house and then I would live stream them and I just kind of put together during this live streaming with a donate button, like a tip jar and that stuff. And that sounds much better than what I made.
Amanda:
They did a really great job. It’s a really cool concept.
Tracy:
I love it.
Amy:
Do we have a link? That’ll be in the show notes.
Tracy:
Okay, cool.
Amanda:
Yeah, really cool.
Amy:
Well, it’s been wonderful having you join us today. Before we go, can you tell everybody where they can find you online?
Amanda:
Yeah. So anywhere on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook is Amanda Gormn without the a, so Amanda G-O-R-M-N. So that will be where you can find me there, on LinkedIn as well. And GiveWP, you can find me at amanda@givewp if you do want to learn more about the Give plugin.
Amy:
Awesome. Thanks for being with us today.
Amanda:
Thank you so much for having me. I had so much fun.
Tracy:
Thank you.
Amanda:
Thank you.
Tracy:
Thank you. Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter or join our Facebook group. We would be honored if you subscribe to the show, you can find us on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and iTunes. Finally, if you want to be on the show or know someone who would, visit our website, @womeninwp.com. Until next time.
