Amy Masson:
Welcome to Women in WP, a bi-monthly podcast about women who blog, design develop and more in the WordPress community.
Angela Bowman:
Hi, welcome to Women in WP. I’m Angela Bowman.
Amy Masson:
I’m Amy Masson.
Tracy Apps:
And I’m Tracy Apps.
Angela Bowman:
Our guest today is Julia Taylor joining us from Durango Colorado where, I live in Colorado too. She teaches WordPress development primarily to women. Welcome Julia.
Julia Taylor:
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Angela Bowman:
We’d like to start off each episode asking our guests how they got into WordPress. How did you get started?
Julia Taylor:
Oh gosh, how did we all get started? Kind of random, isn’t it? Let’s see. This was probably about 2014, 2015. I was in a nine to five and I randomly came across coding. I have no background in it. No formal education, nothing. I’m completely self-taught but I came across coding and I googled something and I found this line of code, put it into a backend. It wasn’t WordPress that I used at the time. Whatever I put in worked. To me, this was like this magical moment and I was like, oh my gosh, I just googled something and then made it work. It got my brain going is that something I could learn more and do more with? I did, I learned a ton and I got into… It started front end and I started to dive into backend development.
I looked at Ruby and I was like, okay, maybe that’s a little outside my comfort zone and I found WordPress. I was like wow. This is really awesome because I could take all the cool coding stuff that I’d learned and I could dive into the ‘hard parts of WordPress.’ That’s where I really fell in love with it. Is all the customization and I learned PHP just by playing around with WordPress. That’s how I got started. It was the coding first and then fell in love with WordPress because I got to combine the two.
Tracy Apps:
I love it. When I think about the languages that I know because I also was self-taught. I taught myself PHP because of WordPress. It’s like PHP lite. It’s like the PHP with trainer wheels when you have it with WordPress because you do have so much that you can rely on with that. That’s really awesome. What were you doing before you just dived into code?
Julia Taylor:
Yeah. Way before that I used to work for the government. I worked in the intelligence community actually. In 2008, I was deployed to Afghanistan and when I was there, that was my first deployment I met a guy, fell in love. He’s now my husband. We just celebrated 10 years marriage but he’s British. That’s where the story takes a turn is we did long distance for a long time. He deployed a ton, I deployed a ton, traveled a lot. I had a great job. I loved what I did, but I… Love took over and I quit my job. I moved to the UK, became a military wife which I’m very proud of. But my career progression took a nose-dive. We moved a lot as you do and every time I moved, I had to find a new nine to five. It was the last nine to five that I was in where my boss came in and told me he wanted the website to be able to have this certain functionality.
I had no idea what he was talking about and I Googled it, figured it out and that was the way that I found code and really it was… Oh wait, hang on. This thing that Hollywood makes you think is super hard and you think you have to have the degrees and the 10 years experience and all the things. Mostly it’s guys doing it, then all of a sudden I just Googled it. Hang on is this something I could do more of? That’s what got me on the path.
Amy Masson:
I hear that so much. I needed to figure something out and so I Googled it and then I figured it out. But can I just back up and ask you, so you’re telling us you’re a spy?
Julia Taylor:
Back in the day.
Angela Bowman:
She’s all born [crosstalk 00:04:16].
Julia Taylor:
I started as a spy and then I learned WordPress. I love it.
Tracy Apps:
That would make a really great film. It’s a very niche audience but…
Julia Taylor:
Who would play me? That’s the question.
Amy Masson:
Yes. That is a good question.
Tracy Apps:
We should open that up that… There we go. Here’s the-
Angela Bowman:
Here’s an Instagram post. Who should play Julia Taylor in her spy movie?
Tracy Apps:
Yeah. Make our movie like…
Amy Masson:
When you first started doing WordPress, were you working with clients? Were you just working as a solution to your problem that you had or how did it progress?
Julia Taylor:
It progressed very slowly. I never at a million years wanted to run my own business. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. It was not something that I even knew what it was or how to do it. I wanted a job. I wanted a nine to five that I could progress in my career. I learned as much as I could and I thought if I learn a lot then I can get a job working remotely. I learned a lot and I applied to a bunch of jobs and crickets, nothing. I didn’t have the degree. I didn’t have the 20 years of experience, all the things. It was a friend of mine who was retiring from the military that said, “I am starting my own business, can you build my website?” I was like [inaudible 00:05:47]. I can’t do that, that’s not a real thing.
Of course, I could have and I did, but it took a lot of convincing and he loved it and he said, this is what you should do. You should start a business building websites for small businesses and I was really reluctant. I didn’t know how to find clients. I wasn’t big on social media because of my previous job so that took some time.
Amy Masson:
Being a spy.
Julia Taylor:
I didn’t have community. Yes, exactly. I really struggled to take on that position and start a business. It was a good few years before I did. It was about 2017 when I finally was okay, I’m going to give this a go. I found clients and found a community and built a business building websites for other people and then I did that for a good couple years.
Angela Bowman:
You got into teaching people too? When did you start the teaching and who are your students?
Julia Taylor:
Yeah. This is what I get most excited about. I’m so privileged to be able to do what I do. I was building websites and it was late 2018 and my husband was retiring from 21 years in the military and we were thinking, okay, what’s next for him? Does he get a real job or do we just go off and do something different. We sold everything and we moved into an RV. We lived in an RV for a year and a half. We traveled all over the US and we were looking for somewhere to settle, but we just wanted to travel. My business was doing well, so it meant that I could work from anywhere. We did this and when we first set off, I set up an Instagram account to document the journey and to share about full-time travel and living in an RV and all the highs and lows that come along with that.
A lot of people said to me, how are you able to travel full-time? Are you independently wealthy? Are your parents paying for it? That’s always the assumption, isn’t it? I said, no. I taught myself how to code and then how to build websites. I use WordPress and I find clients and I can do it from anywhere. People genuinely said, “I want to learn how to do what you do. Can you teach us?” I thought okay. Well, I’ve never taught anything before. The only thing I knew to do and this was just a guess was to create something where I’m teaching people how to code based on how I wish I’d learned. That was all I could think to do. I created a free five day coding challenge because I thought I want people to be able to start from literally the very beginning.
The very first thing we do is inspect tools because it’s awesome. It’s such a cool, quick, easy win for people to look at it and go, oh, no way. It’s not gobbledygook and it’s not like the super hard thing that Hollywood makes you think. It’s a lot easier than that. Then we go into HTML and CSS and build a really simple two page website just with using those. Just to give people a taste because I’m a big believer that coding is not for everyone. However, I think a lot more people would love it if they just gave it a shot. That’s what we try to do. We did that, people loved it and they said we want to learn more. I created a program specifically for WordPress focusing on WordPress development because you all probably know this very well, but the amount of times you see an ad or there’s a page builder or something and they say, no coding necessary. I’m like, no, why phrase it that way? Because you’re just turning people off and making it sound so scary.
I take it from the other approach of no, let’s build a WordPress site entirely from scratch. Why? Because you can, and because it makes you feel awesome and empowered and you’re learning the hard way. Do you actually build websites that way? No. But if you learn that way, you dive into PHP and media queries and all the thing so you can fix any issue that comes up with WordPress because oh my word, they break all the time. WordPress sites and the maintenance and the malware and the hosting and the migration, all those things. That’s what we cover is the hard part of WordPress, the really techy stuff.
That’s what I get to teach now. We combine that program with a community and that’s the most important thing for me because when I was learning, the amount of embarrassment and the ridicule and people me a hard time for asking a dumb question. I wanted to give up so many times. When I created this program, it absolutely came with the community and that’s back the community which is now turned into my brand. It’s a safe place for anyone, primarily women in our program. But we do have a lot of awesome guys, but there are no douchey people allowed, no mean people. There’s no such thing as a silly question. We’re just there to support, encourage each other and be there for the highs and the lows.
Amy Masson:
No douchey people allowed is now my new tagline for Women in WP. No douchey people allowed.
Julia Taylor:
That’s great-
Angela Bowman:
This could be on of our T-shirts part of our Zazzle store.
Amy Masson:
Okay, you were building client websites and then you moved into creating this educational experience. Are you still building clients websites? Are you only doing this education now?
Julia Taylor:
Yeah. I stopped with client work in late 2020. 2020 was a big growth year for us. With COVID, and a lot of folks staying home, we had a big explosion of new students. Last year was really all about business growth. I went from two people, me and one other person on the team, now there’s seven of us. I love my team and I get to… Every single person who’s on my team was a student first. They’ve been through the program. They were in the community. They are in the community. They believe in our mission, our vision and they love what we do and they just embody that. Now I get to do things like this. I get to be on podcasts and I get to be the visionary of the business, because I want to grow the business so I can grow my team. I get to pour into my team and they get to pour into my community and it all grows and goes from there.
Tracy Apps:
I love that. Just looking at my own journey of playing around, copying and pasting something into… I was like, wow, that worked. That’s really great and empowering that and especially having that community aspect of it because I also wish I had different tools when I learned or when I was teaching myself. How does the course work? Is it everything like people attending classes? How is it set up? Especially with the community aspect of it, which I think is crucial when it comes to with education and getting people excited about it so I’d love to hear more about how this all works.
Julia Taylor:
Yeah. It’s entirely online. It’s all prerecorded videos and we’re actually just going through a complete revamp because as you’re well aware, WordPress changes quite a lot and has changed a significant.
Tracy Apps:
Yeah, a little bit.
Julia Taylor:
Yes. A good amount [crosstalk 00:13:40]. Yes, exactly. It’s a good day to do this. We’re kind of looking to revamp every time there’s something new. We obviously, with Gutenberg, there was a whole stuff that we threw in on there and we’ve partnered with WP Engine and studioPress. I’ve worked closely with Brian Gardner to make sure that everything that we’re providing is really high level good stuff, but also trying to follow the trend of where WordPress is going. It’s all prerecorded videos. So me sharing my screen, going through everything from literally just getting a site up and running using what are we on 2021? The out of the box theme.
We use local development environment. I don’t want my students to have to go and buy hosting until they’re able. We do as much as can, we go through that. We go through all the ins and outs of WordPress because it is not user friendly. It is confusing at first if you’ve never used it before. I want to nip that in the bud as soon as possible, just to say, hey, you’re not the only one that finds yes, Squarespace is user friendly. It just looks so much easier, but when you figure out what works with WordPress and where things are, it just makes a lot more sense. I try to ease people in and then we go into… The big, massive part of the skills section is building a WordPress site from scratch.
I use underscores to kind of show them going from that to a full on site. We dive deep into HTML, CSS and PHP from a project perspective. We’re building a site as we go. It is learning and doing. We do a lot on migrating malware. I have the multiple lessons on teaching them how to clean up malware, because that’s something you can charge good money for and happens all the time. Maintenance and updates and security and backups. We also, after I created the program, a lot of students said, okay, how do I start online business? How do I find clients? How do I market myself on social media? We’ve added all of that as well. I’ve had a ton of experts come in that present them with other online opportunities.
Digital marketing, learning about how to run Facebook ads, UTMs and Google analytics and all that. I think WordPress obviously is amazing, but I also know that it’s not the end dollar be all. Once someone gets into building websites, there’s so much more to online business. Nowadays, a website isn’t all… That’s not it. Business owners need more than just a website. They need email marketing and they need copy. There’s so many other things. I have experts that come in and kind of teach them all those other things that they could offer.
Amy Masson:
That is very comprehensive.
Julia Taylor:
Thank you.
Amy Masson:
I’m trying to imagine how many courses does that end up being?
Julia Taylor:
It’s just one. Yeah. It’s all one big thing and the community along with it. Like I had mentioned, we take a lot of our students ideas to heart and we’re working on a revamp and what we’re going to do is obviously all the new things coming out with WordPress, but also have a focus on the marketing side. We do cover that, but I really want to take my students on a journey and I want to be there with them every step of the way. Now, it’s just, here’s a whole load of stuff, go drink from the fire hose. Whereas what I would prefer to have is a very specific track for people to take. As soon as they join, it’s do this skill, plan this, and then go out and market yourself in this way and do it in a way that gets them… Because what I really want is I want people to get their investment back immediately as soon as possible, and then start making money and grow from there.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah, I think that’s… I’ve taught for years, a six week course where I did the same thing and it was one day a week in person for six weeks and just started from the local, taught them how to build a theme from scratch and then also we used a simpler page builder that also required learning hooks. Learning how to write a function. Learning how to do CSS and the inspect tool, and then all the way to the end to troubleshooting. When I stopped teaching in person because of COVID, it all just, and I had a switch of like, what tool was I going to teach them? Because I had a lot of designers. I wanted to teach underscores, which I taught a little bit on the side with the custom. Kind of what I started them with was just building a theme from scratch.
I feel like you’re right. Like understanding this, this isn’t magical woo woo stuff that happens. All these page builders, all these tools are actually using WordPress functions. This is just WordPress and understanding how WordPress works in the template hierarchy. Goes a long way to understanding then what a page builder is doing or a theme builder or whatever you call it these days. Yeah. With COVID and not being able to teach in person and have all my materials online, but not in video form. It’s all the written lessons that would accompany the in person. I truly appreciate the hundreds of hours that you’ve put into recording the videos screen shares because it is so much work and then everything changes. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to go. I tried recording a five minute video one time and it took me four hours and then I’m just like, oh, there’s just no way I will get through this.
Amy Masson:
Every time I tried to record a screen cast, I have to do it at least five times.
Angela Bowman:
Yeah.
Tracy Apps:
Yeah.
Angela Bowman:
I’m just going to refer people to your course that they’re…
Tracy Apps:
Yeah, exactly.
Angela Bowman:
I’ll say take her course and then I could teach something else. Not [inaudible 00:20:04].
Tracy Apps:
I teach web development for digital marketers and that kind of stuff. We just scratch the surface of that so then I could be like, I have people that they’re like, oh, this is amazing. That same kind of like that, oh, you can do all this. Oh, look at that power, that control. It sparks something and that is perfect to have that. I love that. I love that so much.
Amy Masson:
Is your course, it’s real time or it’s just at your own pace?
Julia Taylor:
Right now it’s at your own pace and it always will be. It’ll always be, do it at your own with the new one that we’re going to come up with. Just feedback from students. We will have a little bit more of a structured plan, but of course life happens. People don’t have to do it on that, on that plan and that timeline, but we will offer that just to make sure people have that guidance if they want it.
Tracy Apps:
That’s great.
Amy Masson:
How often do you have to update your lessons when things are changing?
Julia Taylor:
Fortunately with the underscores, there have been a handful of updates, but nothing super massive. Fortunately that’s been okay. With some of the others, there have been local will change something and we’ll have to rerecord that or local doesn’t work on a PC. Largan is an alternative that we use I just heard that there’s an issue with that. There’s constantly always something. Fortunately, because we have the community, if people kind of say, hey, something isn’t working or this doesn’t quite make sense, then we can jump in and say, yep. We’re going to update that soon. Thanks for your patience, but how can we help you right now with what you’re trying to do? Because we have the community, it doesn’t really seem like anyone’s left behind because everything is always changing.
I used Ninja Forms in when I did the underscores build and something has changed slightly.Now we have to kind of say in the video, look, if this isn’t working for you, use WP forums or whatever the alternative was. There are a few things that aren’t perfect from when I first reported it, but because of the community, we’re able to work with people because everyone has different… Are they using Chrome? Is it the most upstate? Are they on a PC or on a Mac? There’s always things that will make it so it’s not perfect. With the community, we can work with people to work through whatever issue they’re having.
Tracy Apps:
That’s one of the things that I, when I’m teaching, I’m like, yeah, great. Anyone can Google or buy a book, but having a community is really invaluable when learning something new like this. I think that’s really amazing. It sounds really cool.
Amy Masson:
Is the community like a Facebook group? Do you have a discussion board? Where are people gathering?
Julia Taylor:
Sure. Yeah. GeekPack is a Facebook group. It’s a private Facebook group. It’s just for students that join the program. But yes, I use Facebook. I’ve got GeekPack as my private Facebook group and then we’ve got another free Facebook community where it’s anyone who wants to come in and get a kind of flavor for what we’re like as a community, as a whole, before joining the program.
Amy Masson:
Oh my gosh, I can’t get enough of this. This is so amazing.
Julia Taylor:
Thank you.
Angela Bowman:
I’m just so glad you exist and I can send people.
Julia Taylor:
Oh, thank you.
Tracy Apps:
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Amy Masson:
Pre COVID, were you involved in any meet up or word camps or anything like that?
Julia Taylor:
I went to a couple word camps in Raleigh. When we moved to North Carolina, my husband’s last military posting was in North Carolina. I went to a couple up in Raleigh and then we started traveling and then COVID. No, just not in not sense. I’ve done some virtual ones, but I would love to be a part of one to play them one to present at one. That would be like a dream come true. But I don’t think they’re in person yet again or maybe they are in some places.
Amy Masson:
Well, they’re talking at about WordCamp U.S in September in San Diego. Of course, I say, I don’t plan anything anymore than six weeks in advance right now because you don’t know how things are going to change. Fingers crossed. I’m going to be able to go and we’ll be able to have our Women in WP party. But if they do, I think that you should sign up to speak for sure.
Julia Taylor:
Oh yeah. Gosh, I just got a little bit nervous all of a sudden, and you just got hot in here. Yeah. I’ll look and see. I love San Diego, so it’s a fantastic reason to go. Yeah, I’d love to…
Amy Masson:
They’ve moved it because it used to be December and then they moved it to Halloween. Now it’s September. I don’t think there’s a date yet. It just says September 2022. They’re just looking for organizers so far. It doesn’t look like they even are calling for speakers, but keep that in your hat ready to hop in. Because I think that you would be a great speaker and a great representative of your community.
Julia Taylor:
Oh thank you. I am very nervous all of a sudden, but.
Angela Bowman:
Well, you have so many lessons to teach people. I think especially to the development community and teaching people, how people do get started and where people come from because there are all those assumptions about what people need to know. Especially at that word camp level, people go to the word camps at all different skill levels. A lot of people are kind of feeling insecure about their capabilities and stuff. I think it’s a perfect word camp talk to kind of lift the curtain and show the wizard behind and say, look, it’s really, you can learn this and it’s not this big scary thing. I think you do a fabulous talk. When you do apply to talk, submit several talks. It’s always a good idea. Yeah. Just come up with three, four, don’t you think Tracy? Because you never know which one’s going to hit with the organizers.
Tracy Apps:
What I ended up doing when I first was like, yeah, I’m going to do this. I just literally took basically note pad. I just started like word vomiting on things of thinking about talk ideas and what I love to do, especially when I do have the, before COVID I’d say. But BC before COVID. I would have more energy to do things. I’m like, oh, I want to learn about this thing. I’d submit a talk about it and then I would have to research it. I had so much fun with that. My inner geek, just like… But honestly one of the things, and I remember when I was first starting to apply to speak at work camps, all that I had seen or maybe that is probably in my brain.
It was probably like, oh, everyone is a developer. That’s these things. These technical talks. I do development, but I Google things a lot. I don’t know if I would be someone that could speak on anything development. One, that’s not the case. But two people are hungry to learn about the holistic, because WordPress is not just like, we’re all developers and word camps aren’t all just like I code for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But it’s like, oh, I heard about this internet thing and I might want to start a business. Those kinds of things, especially since you’ve had that experience of just like, well, you know what? Let’s try this. Here’s the things that I wish I would’ve known.
Angela Bowman:
That’s a great talk. Things I wished I would’ve known. Yes. There’s [crosstalk 00:29:29]. There’s one here’s one time. The 10 things I wish I would’ve known. Yeah.
Julia Taylor:
Yeah. I got a lot more than 10.
Tracy Apps:
Just make it in several parts and so you’ll have several different talks already written and then you’ll be like part one and then part two.
Angela Bowman:
I love it. Yay.
Amy Masson:
I am like ready to sign up for that court, that track right now. There should be a whole track, not just one talk, but a whole track called things I wish I knew. You just can go all day to different people’s talks about things they wish they knew. Whole track. Okay. The WordCamp U.S organizers, if you’re listening to this, this would be our recommendation, a whole track on things I wish I knew.
Tracy Apps:
It could be like things I wish I would’ve known about grilling chicken. Like, oh, anything could be helpful [crosstalk 00:30:30]
Amy Masson:
WordPress checking. That’s where we are now. Thanks Tracy.
Tracy Apps:
All right, when I went to south by Southwest many years ago and I was going to… Because they submit those talks like 17 years in advance in order to get accepted. It’s like this stuff was like, oh I read this blog post about this subject six months ago and so I’m not paying like $2,000, whatever it was for that pass. I was like, just to like hear someone rattle off what they wrote about six, seven, eight months ago. I went and I did a strategy of, I was like, I changed my strategy mid conference. I was like, I’m going to go to only things because I had all these excuse, the HTML5 had just come out or something like at that I don’t remember. I was like, I’m going to go to only things that I don’t know anything about. I went to a cooking for geeks and I learned so much and it was so great. It was like, this is science. Yeah.
Angela Bowman:
Because we have to feed ourselves as developers. I think, like Aruba someone I follow on Twitter, we were talking about the [inaudible 00:31:49].
Amy Masson:
Well, she’s been on the show.
Angela Bowman:
And she’s been on the show. Yes. We were talking on Twitter about this unconference. She was talking about, she would teach food prep. How to prepare yourself for the week. That is 100% about successful WordPress development.
Tracy Apps:
Absolutely.
Angela Bowman:
Nutritiously throughout your week and require. I think these topics of things, I wish I would’ve known about how to exercise and have work life balance and not lose my mind while I’m taking care of these crazy clients with their [crosstalk 00:32:22].
Amy Masson:
I’ve been to plenty of that weren’t just about WordPress that were about all kinds of things that were tangentially, is that a word? Related.
Tracy Apps:
Yeah. Well, because we aren’t just one dimensional creatures. We could, maybe Women in WP needs to organize a things I wish we knew conference, and if a word camp wants to have us, that would be fine. But I think that would be great.
Angela Bowman:
Julia, what’s something you wish you would’ve known just about on that line of work life balance in going into this career venture?
Julia Taylor:
Oh yeah. I struggled a lot with work-life balance. Yeah. A lot. At first I was just so obsessed learning as much as I could that I would just do it all the time. I would miss meals and i interesting how you said about meal prep, how that’s… It’s so true. That’s such an important thing because I would. I would miss meals and I would stay up late and I would do it in the middle of the night and I would wake up and if something wasn’t working and then when I started working with clients and going between that and the teaching that I do now full time, the two things, it was like two full-time jobs. Constantly battling with client stuff and then trying to progress the student thing.
It was last year was the first time in five plus years that I had like a decent work life balance and it’s because of my team. I’ve got an amazing handful of women that work for me that they take care of all the operational day to day, the community, the questions so that I can be the CEO. I can vision cast. I can build the business and I can, like I said, do things like this and meet other people and network because that’s how the business will grow. The team will grow. The community will grow. The impact will grow. That’s at the heart of everything that we do. It is the mission and the vision is to reach and impact more women and empower them to learn tech skills. Yeah. That’s what we do. By me stepping away from the day to day, enables me to kind of have a lot more networking opportunities and meet more folks. Yeah. Word camp is a great idea.
Angela Bowman:
And you’re eating meals, I take it now?
Julia Taylor:
Yes I do. I do. I do you regularly. I think one of the things that to add to things I wish I would’ve known, for me, that’s been really game changing has been mindset stuff. When I first got into online business and I heard that there were business coaches, or there were mindset coaches, I was like, that is complete nonsense and hog wash. How can you not just live normally? Why do you need someone to coach you? But as I transitioned from doing the business and working with clients, into creating a whole other business with the education piece and finding students and launching and creating the program, all of that.
I do have a business coach and a mindset coach, which has been huge because little did I know all that imposter syndrome was holding me back for so long. Is it gone? No, absolutely not. I still have imposter syndrome and I still have that kind of voice in the back of my head saying, whoa don’t… Being on this podcast, before getting on thinking to myself, what if they don’t think I’m legit? What if I haven’t been doing this long enough? What if they’re a whole lot cooler than me. But no matter what, they will –
Amy Masson:
Well, that’s been dispelled.
Julia Taylor:
I tell my students all the time that it’s completely normal to feel that way and it’s okay. Recognize that it’s happening and it’s uncomfortable, but you’re doing something out of the norm. You’re learning this skill. You’re starting this business for a reason. Keep that reason in mind. Is it so you can stay at home because your kids are homeschooled now? Is it because you want to travel full time? Whatever the why is keep that in mind when that imposter voice comes in and it doesn’t go away.
I had it way back when I first started and now you today getting on this call with y’all. Every step of the journey, there will always be that fear voice. But I have worked enough with my coach to have ways to push through. Was I nervous about this morning? Absolutely. Am I doing it anyway? Of course I am, because that means that there’s a chance that my community might grow more and I might be able to reach more women and empower them to learn a tech skill. I will put myself out of my comfort zone to be able to achieve that.
Tracy Apps:
Every time I teach the first class, the last class, almost every class in between, I’m like, I’ve been doing this for decades. I still feel like I get this. I’m like, oh, have I just been a spy? Have I just been like… I doesn’t matter how many years. It’s going to be like the day I die to be like, but do I really know what I’m doing? That’s the thing. We’re starting to talk about it more and I think one thing is like women, and just any disenfranchised community is much more vocal about like, yeah, no. This is a real thing. By being really vocal about it is like only helping everyone. How many times, like the running theme on this podcast is I just did –
Amy Masson:
I’m not a real developer. That’s [crosstalk 00:38:48].
Tracy Apps:
I just made a plugin. That’s one of the most popular plugins that’s used by millions of people, because it didn’t exist, but I don’t know. Because I just had to, and I’m like, that’s amazing.
Amy Masson:
Every single time I set a bar for myself, this milestone is going to be success. This amount of profit is when I’m going to be a considered successful or this number of clients. Every time I meet one of those, I still feel like I am a fraud.
Tracy Apps:
Yep. But is that really like… Yes. It is.
Julia Taylor:
Yep. It’s so easy to tell other people. Yep.
Tracy Apps:
Exactly. I was like, yeah. Think about trying to tell this to your best friend. If you don’t, wouldn’t use those same words for your best friend?
Angela Bowman:
Tracy, now we know you have… Tracy Apps has infiltrated to the WordPress community.
Tracy Apps:
They will never find me out. I distract him by a bow tie.
Amy Masson:
Oh my gosh. Well, it has been amazing having you on the show today, Julia. Before we go, can you tell people where they can find you online?
Julia Taylor:
Yeah. The easiest place is peaktrack.com. We’ve got everything there from all the free resources that we have to the courses, YouTube channel, blog, everything is there. On, I think on all my social platforms I’m Julia the geek just about everywhere. I just got on TikTok, which is shockingly a lot more fun than I expected. Yeah. I’m enjoying that. I’ve given that a go.
Tracy Apps:
If you follow me, don’t look at my last video because it was using one of those filters that is just so bad. It’s so terrible. I’m like, why did some developer, thinking about like all the stuff that we do and then that I was like, some developer made this and it’s terrible thing and they put it out in the world and they’re like, yep. I did that.
Angela Bowman:
Everyone listening to this do not look at Tracy’s last TikTok. [crosstalk 00:41:12] 100% look at it now
Julia Taylor:
I’m going to look now.
Angela Bowman:
Have a wonderful day, Julia.
Speaker 7:
Thank you so much.
Julia Taylor:
This was great. It was an absolute pleasure, a real honor to get to come on and chat with y’all. Thank you.
Amy Masson:
Thank you for listening. Interested in being on the show? Sign up on our website, womeninwp.com. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook group to have conversations with other women in WordPress.
