This week Mastermind.fm is joined by content marketer and founder of JustReachOut - PR That Converts, Dmitry Dragilev. He's here to talk in-depth about things that are sure to revamp your SEO game plan, get you headed in the right direction, and maximize your SEO potential! Topics Include: Getting to the top of Google search results On advanced SEO strategies. Becoming a SEO "hacker". PR Outreach & Content What is Influencer Marketing? What to look for to rank higher. Finding holes in conten...
Mar 07, 2017•1 hr 7 min
We have a first this week on Mastermind.fm, with a full four cornered discussion. James and Jean are joined by Per Esbensen and Tomaž Zaman, cofounders of Codeable. Topics Include: How Per and Tomaž met. Conceptualizing Codeable. How Codeable developed. Addressing startup challenges. Per on Elance and why he felt Tomaž was underselling himself. Why paying your employees what they are worth is win-win. Explaining the process of signing up and/or working from Codeable. The ins and outs of the enti...
Feb 28, 2017•54 min
This episode Jean interviews Brian Jackson, director of inbound marketing at Kinsta His methods of digital income are vast, a blogger of food & finance, Brian has worked with WordPress plugins, as a super seller on Flippa, and even as an eBay power seller. Topics Include: Brian's Journey How eBay introduced Brian to internet commerce. CDs and DVDs were his gateway. From there he jumped into web-hosting & building computers. “When you do things online, you quickly find out where your time...
Feb 15, 2017•54 min
Guest hosting this episode is Dave Rodenbaugh. Owner of Business Directory Plugin, AWPCP, and Recapture.io. Dave has been a developer for 20 years, and has been working in the Wordpress ecosystem since 2009. He also cohosts the Rogue Startups Podcast with Craig Hewitt, the man behind Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin and Podcaster Motor. Topics Include: James & Dave talk the how, when, and why of podcasting. Rogue Startups Podcast anticipates their 1 year anniversary. What makes a good podc...
Feb 07, 2017•57 min
In this digital age, whether you thrive in the product or service space, recognition is half the battle. To that end, you want and need search engine optimization to be on your side. Jean and James are joined by Danny Donchev for professional advice, myths, tips, tricks, and proven strategies that are bound to help you fight and befriend the necessary evil that is SEO. So be sure and join Mastermind.fm for this great episode, and absolutely have your notepads at the ready! Topics Include: A brie...
Jan 24, 2017•1 hr 4 min
You're in for a treat this week! Bring a notepad and get ready to jot down some great advice, as James and Jean are joined by Jason Cohen of WP Engine. Get ready for a guest host who will leave you greedy for more and more of his awesome "knowledge bombs". Topics Include: Jason's 20 years of startups. The Story of WP Engine Why Entrepreneurship "Start with what you want and optimize for that." "The best form of advice is to help someone think for themselves..." - Jason The commonality between ha...
Jan 10, 2017•1 hr 16 min
Putting a bow on this past year, Jean and James come together to discuss the good, bad, great, and ugly of 2016, from both a business and podcast perspective. Topics Include: What Mastermind.FM has done for James and Jean on a personal level. James's "obsessive" revamp of his recording office, now turned full studio. Jean "Hurricane Fighter" Galea on his U.S. trip. The joy of podcasting. The dynamic of personalization. Staying on schedule consistently. The struggle for engagement. Surprising ana...
Jan 03, 2017•38 min
Karim Marucchi (of Crowd Favorite) joins Jean to guest host, as they touch on a myriad of topics, from exits, to mergers, acquisitions, and much more. Karim exudes charisma; being a service focused individual, he provides a unique perspective away from the usual product focused interviews Mastermind.FM has had in the past. Topics Include: How Karim's upbringing, heritage, and travels played a role in shaping his business philosophies. His history with architecture and studies in Rome. How a curi...
Dec 30, 2016•53 min
Jean and James dialogue about styles of entrepreneurship as they skim their year end review. Topics Include: Analysis of Malta's digital community. Jean's goals for the New Year and his love of the sport, Padel. Lifestyle Business vs "Business-Business" Defining Priorities & Pursuits Building a Team Becoming a hands-off owner for the benefit of the team. Growing the individual. The continued exploration into the key differences of a local & remote team. Conclusion: Established Team Cultu...
Dec 20, 2016•37 min
With Jean absent this Episode, James has Chris Wallace on to guest host. (Nope, not THAT Chris Wallace.) This is the Chris of Lift UX, Faithmade, ChurchThemes, Remote Jobs, etc...who is just as good, if not better than THAT Chris Wallace. (No offense to the Fox News anchor.) Topics Include: James inquires about Andy Wilkerson's recent acquisition of UpThemes and Chris's branding. Chris talks faith, in correlation to his businesses. Chris talks about working with AMC and developing their second s...
Dec 13, 2016•56 min
Guest hosting this episode, we have none other than WordPress giant, Chris Lema! Blogger, consultant, motivational speaker, etc., Chris brings his experience and perspective to Mastermind.fm for your listening pleasure. No matter your business, you'd be hard pressed to walk away from a talk with Chris and not learn something of value. Topics Include: Chris's take on CaboPress. Motivations Intention Fruits of the Conference Takeaways Pricing Geographic Pricing Segmentation SAAS (Software as a Ser...
Dec 06, 2016•59 min
Our hosts are back after a busy time indeed. Jean attended Web Summit in Portugal, James went to Cabo for CaboPress! So, for your listening pleasure, the two of them sit down and jive about what they learned, big takeaways, and critiques of the conferences themselves. Topics Include: Thorough CaboPress Overview The unique approach to the session-less vacation conference. Very Exclusive, with around 50 attendees. Takeaways are applicable to any business. Discussions on: Branding Hiring Founder is...
Nov 29, 2016•39 min
You read that right, back to basics it is! James and Jean are back at it dialogue style, as you, the listener, are treated to pro-tips that are simple, often overlooked, and immensely beneficial. In this episode, Mastermind.FM asks and elaborates on, "What's your vision?" "What's the purpose of your company, and you as a business owner?" Topics Include: The difference between a vision and a mission. Defining both. What you should be doing to promote each. Finding values in the mission, or missio...
Nov 22, 2016•48 min
This episode James and Jean are joined by Robert Abela, an EU based freelance IT consultant and WordPress Security Professional with WP White Security. Robert is a major player in advocacy for WordPress security, and owns the No. 1 WordPress Monitoring & Audit Trail Plugin. Additionally, aside from his own security blog, Robert is also a guest blogger on many web-security blogs and websites. Topics Include: Robert's journey with WordPress. It all started as a hobby. Robert developed on the s...
Nov 15, 2016•45 min
James couldn't make it for this episode due to illness, but fear not, Jean is joined by online entrepreneur, engineer, and author, Marco Schwartz. With Marco at hand, they discuss stock, dividends, and profits from a business, as they answer tough questions, like, "Should you reinvest, buy other WordPress businesses, or diversify?" Topics Include: Marco's story, his travels, his studies, how he found success. How Marco maintains revenue with his books & video courses, which all started with ...
Nov 08, 2016•1 hr 13 min
"Is your business taking all your evenings and weekends? Even with all that work are you just making ends meet because your clients are always trying to drive down your pricing?"... "Stop running a hobby START running a business.", Curtis McHale. That's right everyone, in this episode of Mastermind.fm, James and Jean interview professional consultant, Curtis McHale. Curtis is a man of many mottos, but one that undoubtedly personifies is, "Help people run the business they want, so they can live ...
Nov 01, 2016•46 min
On this week's show, Jean is willfully "trapped" in Cleveland, Tennessee, after the hurricane evacuation in Florida rendered LoopConf cancelled. Since Jean's conference was cut short, the WP Ninjas crew shows Jean and his wife their Southern hospitality, and their lovably cheesy sense of humor. So be sure and join the whole team in this very special episode, as they "let their hair down", have some fun, and even bare their souls. Topics Include: WP Ninjas team introduction. James has Jean descri...
Oct 24, 2016•47 min
Expressly laid out in absolute detail, this Episode is presented in QA format, as Jean inquires how James and his team took their existing product of Ninja Forms and released a complete rewrite successfully. As such, James gets quite candid about launching WP Ninjas' tremendously challenging work on Ninja Forms, with the release of their very own Ninja Forms 3.0. Covered are things like: the successes, stepping stones, marketing, feedback, the competition, and fear itself. Topics include: The ep...
Oct 17, 2016•46 min
Guesting on Mastermind.fm this week: Andy Wilkerson Andy is the president of Parallelus, UpThemes, and creator of the Runway framework for WordPress. So, join Mastermind.fm as we walk through all that which has led to Andy's acquisition of UpThemes, and any trials, lessons, or ordeals along the way. Topics Include: Venting support frustrations via James' "patented" company communication technique that can help defuse a bad situation. Andy's history and experience with Theme Forest and Envato. Ho...
Oct 10, 2016•1 hr 3 min
Welcome to Episode 32 of Mastermind.fm! Today masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws will be talking digital nomadism with David Hehenberger. David is the mind behind Fatcat Apps, a WordPress company helping bloggers, marketers, and business owners gain traffic and conversions with Fatcat plugins. David and Jean both consider themselves to be digital nomads, while James prefers to keep his feet in one place for the most part. Listen up and we'll dive into what digital nomadism means , how David a...
Oct 03, 2016•1 hr 2 min
Welcome to Episode 31 of Mastermind.fm! This week our resident masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws will tackle onboarding. We usually think about onboarding as bringing a new team member into the fold or something similar. Jean and James expand on the term and take a dive into onboarding as the gateway to getting folks engaged for the first time with your product, service, content, or whatever it is you're up to. It's a really interesting take, so don't miss out! As always, shownotes are below...
Sep 23, 2016•40 min
Welcome to Episode 30 of Mastermind.fm! Jean is with us as always, and we welcome James back this week after a 2 episode break. Today Jean and James will tackle some updates on what is happening in the WordPress community, a bit of business related talk, and what James has been up to for the last couple weeks. Join us now for this week's Mastermind.fm! Talking Business If you've been with us for the last couple weeks, you've noticed that James hasn't been. He's been off monitoring the launch of ...
Sep 16, 2016•32 min
Today's guests are Marcel and Eugeniu from TeslaThemes. The latter might be their first successful WordPress project and the most famous one so far, but they have also launched two other projects in the WordPress space: Greedeals and WPMatic. The whole team behind these projects works in one office. They are based in Chisinau, Moldova, and strive to have a family atmosphere based on an open communication policy where everybody's contribution is welcome. In our discussion we discuss various topic...
Sep 09, 2016•1 hr 1 min
In this episode, I interview my good friend Mitchell Callahan who is involved in WordPress through his agency Saucal. Mitchell introduced me the practical side of Bitcoin last year. “You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller “In a mad world, only the mad are sane.” ― Akira Kurosawa Until I met Mitchell I only knew about Bitcoin in general terms. He persuaded me to set up a Bitc...
Sep 02, 2016•52 min
Welcome to Episode 27 of Mastermind.fm! Today masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws interview Zack Katz, author of the WordPress plugin GravityView! Hang out with us for a bit and have a listen! This was a super fun and interesting interview and Zack has lots of great advice. He's experimented with several marketing and advertising strategies and we can all learn from his experiences to take some smart shortcuts in choosing the best promotional methods for our plugins. Zack also talks about his ...
Aug 25, 2016•56 min
Welcome to Episode 26 of Mastermind.fm! This week our masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws tackle hosting! Hosting can be a nightmare of trial and error to find what works for you in the often weird world of WordPress hosting. Jean and James have been through the wringer on this one, and have come out on the other side ok. Come listen in to the decades of hosting experiences that they've racked up between the two of them and make your own hosting decisions better! As always, show notes are belo...
Aug 16, 2016•36 min
Welcome to Episode 25 of Mastermind.fm! Join our hosts Jean Galea and James Laws today as they jam about podcasting- a topic they're pretty familiar with! Check out their unique take! Whether you're thinking about getting into it yourself or already have and are just looking for some unique ideas, you'll find them right here. Pull up a chair (or put on your running shoes, whatever works for you!) and give Episode 25 a listen! Podcasting Style/Theme Ideas Solo, two-person, three-person shows? Int...
Aug 09, 2016•40 min
Welcome to Episode 24 of mastermind.fm! This week our resident masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws look at the software that they use at work every day for productivity and development. They also mention Slack once or twice. There's a lot of neat tools here, so be sure to check it out! Show notes are below as always, but catch the full audio podcast right here so that you don't miss a thing! Software for Development Slack: Jean and James both use Slack in their development workflow. It's also ...
Aug 02, 2016•7 min
Welcome to Episode 23 of Mastermind.fm! We're doing something a little different today as Jean and James interview Pippin Williamson, author of Easy Digital Downloads, Affiliate WP, and Restrict Content Pro. He's a man that's made the WordPress space a little more awesome for all of us, and a sharp mind to listen to for advice. You can find the questions we're hitting him with from both ourselves and Mastermind listeners below, but tune it to the full episode to hear what he has to say! Mastermi...
Jul 26, 2016•56 min
Welcome to Episode 22 of Mastermind.fm! Today our masterminds Jean and James will be talking about starting your plugin business from scratch. In the last 2 episodes we talked about getting your new product off the ground and gaining traction. We’re going to back up a little here and look at the pre-launch phase. What’s involved? What do you need to plan and prepare for? How do you break into the WordPress space and carve out a niche of your own? Listen in! As always, show notes are below but ca...
Jul 19, 2016•37 min
