Can WordPress Be Used as CRM Software? feat. Spencer Forman

Narrator  0:00  

You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis  0:30  

Welcome everyone to another episode of The all systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis. And I have with me today, Spencer Forman, who is an entrepreneur, and attorney, WordPress strategy and marketing automation expert, the founder of WP launch fi. And we’re talking today about WordPress, beyond websites, but not even just WordPress, more of how to build a marketing ecosystem that you own and can sell if you would like how do you do that? What’s what is the what are the things we should be mindful of in such an approach? And just is it possible? Is it feasible? It might just creating something out of nowhere and creating more complication and more difficulties? Or is this a true solution for the marketing industry? So, Spencer, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Spencer Forman  1:38  

Hey, Chris, and you forgot, fellow Chicagoan to you and I had the pleasure of meeting last year. And by the way, thank you for inviting me on the show. And I’m glad to be here because I think today is going to be a really exceptional value laden conversation. It’s just sort of one of those like the timing was a little off. But now the timing is right. And so this topic today, I’m very excited to talk with you about because before the show, we were discussing, a lot of the changes in the CRM, SAS space, have made this value proposition we’re going to talk about even more important for those that make their living at some level of marketing and marketing automation. And I think it’s worth discussing the ownership and control as well. Because in this case, there’s always been, as we’ll get into, called the externalities of doing business, you know, and my origin story is based on working in that sort of SaaS community back in the days of freemium. And I learned that my clients and customers learned that much like today, it’s almost like oldest new again, having your business in somebody else’s sandbox can be dangerous sometimes.

Chris Davis  2:52  

Yes, absolutely. And I think that’s a that’s probably is what brings us to the topic is that that is the default, Spencer, there is never an additional option even placed on the table that someone could or perhaps should consider. So before we get into the good meat and potatoes of this thing, tell us a little bit about how how did you get into I can already see kind of like a parallel with your attorney background and ownership. And wanting to make sure that everything’s under one that I can see that. But for you what what was that journey like into getting your hands as deep as they are in WordPress.

Spencer Forman  3:39  

I mean, the super short from A to Z as I knew when I was 10 years old, I was an entrepreneur, because like many people, I come from an entrepreneurial family, most of them were attorneys or something, they ran their businesses. But I knew early on that I had this pattern of behavior when I found people who were friends or family who had some pain point, just figuring out how to solve that pain point and then charging them if I could to deliver it was extremely exciting to me. And that was before I knew the word entrepreneur. So as I got older that applied itself to all the various businesses I did through high school and college into young adulthood, I did go to law school and become a trial attorney. And even that was entrepreneurial because I tried the defense side, but then worked over to the plaintiff side where it was more, you know, performance based. What happened here was that a built for 25 years or so a big real estate practice of development and rentals and everything else. And then as anybody knows, you know, around 2000 and 678, things started to get weird. And through 2011 It turned out it was very weird. 

Spencer Forman  4:43  

But during that time, some personal changes where I got divorced, got custody, my kids needed to reinvent what I was going to do because the market that I had been in, while I was not in personal peril had changed so it allowed me to rethink it. Well, my passion along those years had been videography, photography and flying. And I flew a very interesting machine at the time called an microlight trike. And I felt like there must have been a cool way to share photos and videos. And at the time that was before YouTube. I know I’m dating my mom. I am 56 is before Facebook was popular. There was a network called Ning, and it was funded with $100 million. You know what it is? Right? It still exists, by the way. It’s Geno’s running mighty networks. But at the time, it was 100 million bucks, a very energetic team of what can they do with this leftover technology from loud clubs. So they said, Hey, anybody can build anything you want, for any reason, the social network? Well, for a guy from Chicago, entrepreneurial, where you don’t build a hotdog stand unless you sell the hotdogs, you don’t give away hotdogs. I sort of did a double take. And I said, You mean, I get your whole infrastructure and access to your 12,500 people and I can sell anything I want. They’re like, sure. I’m like, Are you sure you’re sure? And they said, Yeah. And I flew out, I met a fellow pilot who was a Google Developer at the time, because at the time, my development skills weren’t up to my marketing skills. They’re a little more balanced now. And we met, we flew, we took their whole team flying, and they said, Yeah, we’re sure. Well, over the next three to six months, he and I just started making all these widgets and solutions, calm tchotchkes that everybody just said they wanted but that Ning wasn’t delivering, and we sold them. 

Spencer Forman  6:32  

Well, you can see where this is going, because my partner at the time predicted it, their attorneys, and the VCs eventually figured out like, Wait, explain this, again, we built the stadium, we spent the money. And these two characters are making all of the actual profit because we’re not charging anything. So they shut us down and blah, blah, blah, one thing led to another I helped a few other companies from overseas who wanted to do the same thing. But by then it was very clear, the promise of freemium was a false promise, Facebook and YouTube and the bigger social network started to take over. There was this little project WordPress that had social network, little baby features, and it had the basic essence of what we have today. And it was this thing called open source. So around 20, oh, 708, I started noticing it. That was where I leaped over. And starting with the features that I was familiar with, like social networking, started to basically help people understand how to build solutions for business. In the early days, it was a lot of mechanical and it was a lot of the website stuff. But there was always an underpinning, because that’s my background, marketing, psychology, sales, entrepreneurship. And you can just go through the evolution of wordpress on your own. But you know, 17 years later, WordPress is now essentially 43 to 45% of the internet, even as we’ll talk about, you don’t talk about it like Home Depot and buying all the parts, the parts themselves are best in class, open source, and we can put together any solution we need now, including CRM capabilities. And so now my focal point through my consultancy in the software and the services and training that we do is to help rescue people who otherwise have a great business or aspire to have a great business and providing those services. But they’re only seeing the world through the eyes of the gilded cages provided by SAS companies, including some that we really, you know, loved and still do in some cases, like Active Campaign, but there’s a promise that they used to keep that isn’t so true anymore. But you now can keep the promise for yourself by using a different way of setting it up. So that’s long and short.

Chris Davis  8:43  

And that’s what brings us today, right is the the so just for some background for my listeners there. Spencer was the first person that I thought of when Active Campaign released their new pricing, which at the time of recording is still just kind of all over the place. I’m seeing horror stories just pop up on LinkedIn, Facebook and everything. And it’s it’s one of those things where you know, you’re satisfied with who you’re with, until they start to really offend you. And you’re like, wait a minute, do I have to take this? Hold on. I wasn’t looking, I didn’t have a wandering eye. But if this is how you’re gonna treat me, I can’t help but look at greener pastures and maybe stuff that I wasn’t thinking of. And that literally happened to me. I’m a advocate of Active Campaign and affiliate work there. I stand by their software, but just how the implications of this just felt so abrasive. It made me think of the question, okay. 

Chris Davis  9:46  

What are the other alternatives that don’t involve putting money into another SaaS product? Just it was more of an exploration, Spencer than anything. It wasn’t that I was essentially saying Get had to be done, or I’m going to do this I’ll show them. So that’s the backdrop that brings us here. And then as you were talking about your story, one of the things that jumped out to me is we’re, we’re, I feel like we’re in the same arena. And we came through two different entrances, like you came in marketing first, and then learn the depth stuff. I came in depth first, and then learn the marketing stuff. And now we both play in the marketing technology arena together, figuring out best solutions for the small businesses that are trying to navigate this. And all they know Spencer is sign up for Click Funnels, sign up for LeadPages, sign up for it and name the tool. And somehow, somehow, somewhere, WordPress, in its increased adoption and usage, is also being looked at now as more complex or Oh, plugins. And it’s kind of like this narrative going on, that I’ve never subscribed to. I’ve been I’ve only used WordPress for all of my websites. I’ve never used anything else. You have issues with all technology, but nothing to the point where I’m like, I’m done with WordPress. For me, WordPress has been the most flexible, and the most reliable platform in my business. So, Spencer, why have we not seen much of an alternative? Or am I wrong? Is there one, when it comes to CRM software? I think they do a really great job for landing pages and even checkout now. I mean, you own software, you have software that actually creates the whatever checkout experience you want to have. But what about the CRM it? Am I even fair to expect such a thing from WordPress? Or is that? Are we not there yet?

Spencer Forman  11:59  

Well, I love that everything. I mean, I’m taking mental notes. And there’s a lot of a lot of really, really great things to unpack. So let’s start with the last question first, because that’ll set the stage. First of all, the evolution of WordPress was very organic from a bunch, I mean, really small, intimate group of people that knew each other, just sitting around the campfire, sharing stuff. And the neat thing about it just to set the stage for somebody who doesn’t understand what is open source mean, it’s a weird concept. I’m 56. I use that as a reference because I’ve been around at the birth of a lot of technology, not the least of which let’s say windows. Imagine if in 1994, you had access to do whatever you wanted with the Windows operating system. And it wasn’t all locked up and licensed or you know dos for that matter. Well, similarly with WordPress, all the cool things that were being created. The software is free. It’s the things that people do with it, the support the automatic updates, the services that are being sold. So over time, the capabilities in the framework that people built with matured, but in the early days, it wasn’t good. 

So one of the things that was the last and most important pieces of the puzzle was the CRM, because there was a moment in time, quite mass. No clay columns, like mask was from Infusionsoft Clay Collins invented Lead Pages way back in the day before Russell Brunson was out of his diapers even and later, my pal Rob walling sold drip to him. But the point was like having sales pages was a huge deal and a hosted platform. Wistia my, you know, pals over there, Brennan and Chris, they I was there at the beginning and that like all these little bits and bobs for SAS, stuff started coming around. And Russell, who’s one of the most amazing marketers has what I’ll call sufficient software. But he cannot compare in any will in fairness. Yeah. I’m old school. So Billy Mays screaming about ShamWow. How’s our you know, go Ron Popeil talking about the pocket fisherman like you were on pencil and paper there. It was in technology. So for marketers, marketing, automation, people, these are all just evolutionary things. The CRM was the last and most important piece of the puzzle. Because one of the software components WordPress that I am directly involved with is WP fusion. And that’s the thing that allowed us to connect any of now more than 55 CRMs to WordPress. But there wasn’t until recently a competent plugin CRM and for those who don’t know what a plug in means, like a Lego block that you could put the CRM inside of your WordPress site, own it and control it. And that is the precipitating event that changes everything. Now, along the way, there was all these other things involved, but the thing that you touched upon, which is really important, like I can think of a bunch of examples, let’s think of a text messaging. 

There was a time when the cellphone carriers could get away With charging you 25 cents with a straight face for every text message, they would be laughed out of, you know, out of the room. Now, you think of now Disney and Netflix and Hulu and all the other verticals where you pay nine to $14 a month, and you get everything they ever made streaming on demand on all your devices versus remember blockbuster or buying, you know, you had to buy a movie for $30 or rent it and then schlep it back and forth. So the evolutionary change with SAS is now being threatened by one other thing. The market economies are membership based. Secondly, AI, which hasn’t really shown its head is going to be a factor here as well, because now a lot of the things that people would have paid for from a service standpoint are not as important. But they’re now going to need somebody who’s an expert in operating the robots or integrating the robots. But the final piece, which you touched upon, which is the basis of this conversation is Is it really necessary in 2023 and beyond to get into a marriage. And that’s really what it is, with a company that has all of the power and all the control because my origin story of Ning was an example. 

Even in the old days, if you have a corporate entity that has its own interest, they will throw everybody under the bus at a moment’s notice. And we’ve seen this recently, like, for example, with the unnecessary but just do it to bump the share price of Facebook and Google and all these other companies laying off 12,000 20,000 When they made $17 billion in profit last quarter, right? They didn’t do it because they need the money. They did it because they’re there to please the shareholders. So when you’re working with a SaaS company versus WordPress, you’re always with what I call an externality. And in the solutions that we now box, people aren’t going to tinker, just here’s the features ready to go that gives you all the same power and control and more that you would have gotten on a platform. But now that’s one less externality for your business, your clients, because there’s only two left and we can talk more details, there’s always going to be the payment gateway, because nobody should be taking credit cards, Stripe, PayPal, whatever. 

Number two is going to be SMTP. We know from the marketing world, there has to be white label, talk to each other, you know, you know geeky about it. But like you can’t just randomly throw up a server and hope that mail is going to be delivered those externalities, you’re agnostic to one or the other. Because if one of those relationships go bad, no big deal, switch. But when you’re talking about putting your business in a CRM, man that is sticky stuff to get out if you’ve really built a business around it, and don’t even get me started for we’re not picking on them. But Ontraport and all this stuff like they sell, they try to get people to sell inside of their Infusionsoft tried to get people to like, if you’re selling inside of your CRM, you might as well, I don’t know, like, open up your bank accounts to the neighbors or something because there’s no control you have over them.

Chris Davis  17:59  

Yeah. And again, the the big pieces, there was once a time where this was the norm. And this was acceptable. And this was a benefit. Like you said, I remember when text messaging was new, you you saved sending that message for when you really need it to send it. Whereas now it’s just like, okay, emoji and response, there was none of that.

Spencer Forman  18:25  

I mean, when it’s the only game in town, you use what you’ve got. And you know, we joke about it, but I have a pad of paper and a pen right next to me, because even in the world that we’ve got, where I use open AI and shut up, like I still use some of those old school things, because it’s the difference between what you need to pay for versus what you couldn’t pay for versus most people just don’t understand, because it’s a lot of details. What’s available to me. I mean, that’s a full time job.

Chris Davis  18:50  

Yeah, and just to catch everyone up, just because I don’t want to assume any intelligence and don’t want you to feel like hey, this conversation is not for me, when we’re talking about your payment gateway. It’s literally the ability for somebody to put in their credit card information on your website, or your web asset. And you be able to process that payment in the money insert into your bank account was minister talks about SMTP. That’s the ability to send emails, you all you all have this, you’re just paying a company to do all of those things. And the question or the potential, the opportunity, the possibility that I’m putting on the table is, what if you could control it? And what if that control would come at a fraction of a cost? Because

Spencer Forman  19:40  

you’re up there on that point? Because you just touched upon like the the the ringing the bell part, the thing that’s killing most people right now. I mean, the thing that’s hurting people’s business right now is that Active Campaign and many other sasses decided coming out of this post COVID bubble of prosperity, to just put their foot down on people. And when you’re on a hosted SAS, they charge you per contact. And that’s just not necessary. Because just like text messaging, I assure you, from a technologist standpoint, it costs them nothing. Whether you have one or 10 million people, when you own and control it, your CRM, guess what? That particular plugin could cost you anywhere from zero to $129? For the whole year? Yeah, versus what does it cost you on Active Campaign every time you add another contact, and they’re really taking advantage of it, because you know why? 

They see the future stand, that this methodology will be evolving. And that’s one of the other secondary benefits not only do you free yourself from somebody’s just raising prices arbitrarily like the cable company or something, but also you set yourself up for a foundation. That’s what I say to people. We put that concrete in the ground, I used to be developer, if you put the right foundation, you can build a high rise or a two storey you can build anything you want. But if you don’t start that foundation by owning and controlling it, everything you build thereafter is going to have to be torn down at some point and moved when the relationship goes back.

Chris Davis  21:14  

Yeah, yeah. And I also want to mention, you work with Jack WP fusion. And here at automation bridge, we love with a capital L O V n e, the plugin the process of development, Jack, his care and the performance. For those of you if you want to hear me just really go in depth about my love for WP fusion, you can go to ASG premium.com Subscribe to the premium podcast. There’s an entire episode dedicated,

Spencer Forman  21:49  

I mean, first of all, Jack himself as a human being one of the most beloved characters in WordPress, but he and I started our relationship over five years ago now, when it was very infancy. He originally, I foisted myself on him, basically, and he retained me professionally, to help them position the early product. And I tell the story, but I have to say in a way that apparently some people are sensitive. When I say this, his product I immediately saw as a dream come true. I used to say the slightly different version. But when I saw it, I was so excited. It was like, right couldn’t contain myself. And he retained me professionally, but it very quickly evolved into what I’ll call a symbiotic relationship. So yeah, I’m basically the chief product marketer or you know, customer satisfaction person, I make myself available for free calls and have for all these years and Jack and I talk fluently, there’s a couple other team members that he’s hired. But Jack is just an outstanding business person and thought leader in that regard. And the product is something that has allowed us the rest of us to do the thing that I just described, which is an I’m pleasantly surprised to say it still stands alone in this regard. It allows you to connect any of the 55, SAS CRMs, plus any number of outside things into your ecosystem of WordPress, where those other components can also talk to each other. And I use this little show and tell it’s just like regular marketing, automation tags and custom fields on the user allow people to go on accustomed journey and then that synchronizes to the CRM. But as we’ll talk about maybe a little more, the CRM doesn’t have to be outside. If the CRM is inside. Now it’s in the box, you own it, control it for yourself for your

Chris Davis  23:30  

yes, okay, we’re here now Spencer, we’re here, CRM inside of the box, right? Have a website? Oh, I want to start sending email. I want to start email marketing. They say that’s one of the most profitable marketing channels. I want to do that. Let me go outside of my website and go find a SAS tool. What if I didn’t have to what do what are some of those options in what kind of experience and Spencer are you? Are you signing me up for some off brand third, third level experience where I don’t get the cream of the crop in my in my contacts, experience, some version, some bootleg version?

Spencer Forman  24:22  

I mean, these are this is really good, by the way that I think that’s the best part about our relationship, the way we handle ourselves. I mean, I think I’ve mentioned this in our other conversations, but I’m old school my grandfather was a local attorney as well. And he was a neighborhood attorney, but he taught me my father in his own way as well. You know, your name and reputation are what you come into the world with. And that’s the only thing that your job is to preserve or to make better and for me, I am very outspoken many of the other things I do in the WordPress space and media and otherwise I am the kid in the Emperor’s New Clothes story telling it like it is and if I’m wrong. I encourage somebody who says I’m a wrong. I do two things. I publicly just like put them on a pedestal and I give them a little digital pony. By the way, especially I go like, here’s your pony and some people have learned a lot of ponies. But I also like to do that because to me, it’s not a matter of being precious. 

It’s a matter of I want the facts. I’m a Scorpio, I need the facts as they are. So in the WordPress space, this small community has been torturous. And I’ve been there the whole time of making sure that if something isn’t kosher, that everybody knows about it right if there’s something not right, and the software has to comply with certain things with regard to how it works in the general stack of other stuff, but more importantly, I’ll give you the very brief story, I am pleasantly shocked and surprised to say that there’s really only one plugin that does the CRM properly in WordPress, and it’s called fluent CRM. I’m not trying to keep anything, you can go find it a fluid crm.com. But I want to explain why that’s not your best choice necessarily. Okay, Shah Jahan Jul. And his team also worked directly with me much like the story of Jack, because they recognize they write a few plugins, fluid CRM, fluid forms fluid SMTP, a few other things that by themselves are like a component you’d find on the shelf and Home Depot. And they recognize as the jack, it’s good to provide something that people can do it yourself. But the majority of the market doesn’t want to go to Home Depot and by parts to fix their toilet or to build something, they want somebody to come out with an orange vest on that says, here’s the thing, you were thinking you needed ready to go, you have so unlike the SAS CRMs, you have complete ownership and control, the feature set continues to evolve because they under Sharjah, Hans leadership had been growing and very, very responsive to all the things that myself and others have said, we need for this to work properly, which by the way, is quite a different experience than trying to get a response from the customers board of a SaaS company, right? Like, gee, it’d be really nice. Put it on the list. We’ll talk to you later right here, especially through again, I like to say some of my direct involvement, we have carved out essentially a small stack of plugins that’s based on using that as the CRM. I use it myself, we use it ourselves, our customers, unless there’s a special exemption, and I’ll go into some of those, we recommend they use it. 

Why? Because number one, ownership and control number two, total cost of ownership, it’s 129 bucks for the retail license, or it could be free. Like I say, in some situations, like we will talk about. But the point is that software just does everything you needed to do and more. Without all of the things that are downsides. And there’s no catch to it. The issue is, most people just spend way too much money in the cookbook, trying to figure out how to make a souffle the first time, maybe the third, fourth 10 1215, they might go over that recipe 47 times till that thing doesn’t collapse. And we say doesn’t have to be that hard. Just like a sap, there’s a way to just come in and pay a certain amount per month or just full ownership. And it’s already curated into what you need. And that’s the future that is being offered by most of the WordPress hosting companies and everything else except they don’t really understand what we’re talking about. Because ours is based primarily marketing automation, first membership, e commerce sales funnels, the things that are the promise of the Click Funnels or the CRMs. That’s what we’re delivering. 

We’re not as worried about things that are easy, like design, and you know, page layout that’s been done. And there’s a million ways to do that. So yes, the promise is one that I would put my name and reputation on and do every day. And I feel that you’re on the same page with that as well, because it’s not some false promise. It’s demonstrated by many of the features that we can go into one thing I’ll just put a pin in is fluid CRM allows you with WP fusion, to have what I call a single source of truth setup. We use this ourselves. So as you go to Spencer foreman.com ECF several hubs and I have lots of other social and other professional sites. I have one website, at one WD talk deep TV. That is my like nothing happens in public. Behind it is a fluid CRM setup where all the other sites talk to remotely. It’s $129 a year for the CRM. I have a million people all going through my single source of truth where the emails come out of the marketing automations. And that’s something that everybody dreams of, but you would have to pay an arm and a leg to go to a SAS to do Yeah,

Chris Davis  29:45  

yeah. So I’m, I’ve been researching this. And again, if you’re in the automation bridge community, you can leave a comment under this episode. If there’s a particular tool that I’m about to mention, and you’re like, Hey, what’s that or if you just have One that I haven’t mentioned and the ones that have come up that more prominently are I don’t know me by funnel kit that used to be WP funnels I believe I had. I had one of their co founders on the podcast, I need to have jewel on here. I need to get a

Spencer Forman  30:17  

wonderful entrepreneur but I want to I don’t want to say anything other than complimentary. I want to clarify, we just talked about this on our membership Mastermind Show. Auto Nami does not exist or do things outside of what it’s supposed to do in WP funnels. That’s a big difference,

Chris Davis  30:33  

or now frontal case. doesn’t demand on its own. Yes, yeah. It’s

Spencer Forman  30:37  

it’s literally only made for that it doesn’t do what normal CRMs do.

Chris Davis  30:43  

Yes. And then the other one that has come up is my buddy Chris Badgett, at lifter LMS ground groundhog. Groundhog is the other one,

Spencer Forman  30:55  

Adrian Toby and his family. And again, I Chris and I go way back and everybody else team and Kurt also does Kurt’s on the team. He’s with me at membership mastermind as well. So Adrian and I were good colleagues. He was also on WP Tonic. We had a conversation about two years ago. I can’t speak for Adrian, He’s young. He’s brilliant, his family’s involved in the business. He’s doing amazing stuff. But back then I’m going to characterize it like this. I said, I would like to see the direction of that plugin go as a feature of the stack of other things, just like fluent decided to. He seems to have responded in a way where at the time, he said he is more looking to build a platform plugin, and his pricing and his model. And there are several other examples of this in the WordPress space. Natalie looser and her husband have an amazing access ally, which is connected only to two CRMs plugin right it only goes to Infusionsoft and only goes to Active Campaign. But I have talked nicely as I can cuz she’s an amazing human being and successful. That is a gilded cage. 

So I’m gonna say here publicly, I’m not going to speak for Groundhog, but I can’t endorse groundhog because all the things that I saw about it were, it was gonna be a framework. And when you put yourself in a framework, it’s the same thing as putting yourself into a SAS. And that’s different, because here’s the main distinction. Okay, let’s say today, you used fluid CRM, and you just had, you know what this relationship isn’t working out with me, no big deal. Just connect to another CRM, maybe SendinBlue or something, get everything back together again, because you get WP fusion. You can’t do that in a framework. You can’t do that. When you’re using autonomy with WP funnels or funnel kit. You can’t do that. And just saying like in other words, I advocate each plugin be the best feature it can be and not have these external limitations or gilded cage elements to it. Because that is like in the metaphor of Legos. Imagine if Legos didn’t snap together, you had to melt plastic or you can only use this Lego block only with this Lego block. No, yeah, any Lego block with any Lego block, and you can take one out and throw it away and start over. And that’s the future. That’s like, that’s the point of it, isn’t it? Right? Like if you if you said I want to be single person, and by the way, I’m going to sign a contract for 10 years to be in a relationship that’s really the same as being married, you know?

Chris Davis  33:25  

Yeah. Yeah, just worded differently. So it, it sounds like, you know, when we’re looking at at WordPress, you know, aside from ownership, which is inherent because WordPress does not exist unless you have your own server and you’ve installed it, where you also bring up the the functionality of being able to interchange parts. So you know, if my CRM needs change, I’m not stuck with this, what I call the Great Migration over into something else, because that’s one part, I can just unplug and put another one in place. Let’s talk about

Spencer Forman  34:07  

that. Because that goes all the way back to the origin story of the making and social go in the other SAS freemium products that I was working with. Yes. Imagine you’ve got some computer from the 60s with those reel to reel stuff. And or even better for most of us. Imagine you had an eight track tape or a mix tape from your high school or in my case, it was you know, whatever. 800 years ago, like a cassette tape, you know what your biggest problem is? Where can you find something you can play that, right? Similarly, if you’re on a SAS or a framework, versus the WordPress stack that I’m suggesting we can offer ready to use already hosted because the hosting is a commodity anyway. The problem people have is there’s nowhere to go with it. So in other words, in the old days would like Ning take your data with you Where, what are you going to do with this data? It’s just a JSON file that’s gobbly gook to most human beings. With WordPress, especially a curated stack. You know what the biggest best promise we make that makes people want to stay with us forever. It’s an open door relationship. You start with this thing today, just doing your business just like a SAS, we prevent you from breaking a bunch of stuff just by being here to tell you this is a good idea or not. If you ever want to end the relationship, take it with you to go and you know, where you just go, you go to any other host, and you’re good to go. 

Because it’s WordPress, it’s self contained in the box. You can’t do that. Like, where are you going to take active campaign data, like you have to rewrite all of your automations you have to port all of the stuff you have to copy paste. And that’s especially true if you’re using let’s say sales pages in Ontraport, or Infusionsoft, or God forbid HubSpot, you know, for the expense that they charge every month, you’re building yourself into that gilded cage. So that’s something that’s important. Number one, people don’t have to worry about ever where they’re going to go if they wanted to leave. But number two, it’s documented so easily, like, half the Internet uses WordPress. So any Tom Dick carry? Suzie could help you from a Craigslist ad? Versus Where are you going to find an expert to help you porting some esoteric plugin or SAS thing?

Chris Davis  36:22  

Yeah, people make a living off of that, you know, charging charging top top tier for it. Let me ask you this, because you so now you’ve kind of introduced me to it can be more than a possibility, it can be a thing. And then No, it isn’t. For everyone, right? Like this is already existing

Spencer Forman  36:42  

precedent blinding you today,

Chris Davis  36:45  

if I if that you’re telling me I just want my listeners to follow me, Spencer, I could go this route, have my website, landing pages, CRM, and payment processor in one package, pay a fraction of the cheapest CRM out there and lose nope, no functionality, and be able to run my marketing and own it.

Spencer Forman  37:17  

Yeah, and plus, and yes. And, as a bonus, you have the best relationship in the world, because that’s what you’re paying for. In other words, the software as I started with is free. But you’re never really buying the software anyway, you’re buying a relationship. So instead of going to the flea market on a Sunday, and wandering the booths hoping to meet the right people to put together something for Sunday dinner, you go to one stop. And obviously you and I are talking I’m at the center point of this, because this has been the problem I’ve been helping to solve and WordPress. Yeah, moving it from a flea market to a press a button. Now the cost depends on what you want to do for the relationship. We have things that started free, it could be $19 a month, it could go up to something like 300 a month, or it could even be a custom project. But when you add up the expenses of what it would cost you on a SAS thing, and the expertise and any other training and esoteric 100% Every single time the personal relationship you’re paying for it, which means like literally, let’s talk on Zoom one to one or email like somebody who knows what you want to do. 

Plus the software plus the ready to go, it’s always less than if you just paid third party services. And that’s the difference. Going back to my metaphor of remember when we had to pay 25 cents for every text message how ridiculous it is. Remember when we had to buy a movie for $30. And now my kids have 10,000 choices, because they’re not selling that anymore. They realize people aren’t stupid, and your audience and my audience isn’t stupid either. So that when these companies like Gumroad, and Active Campaign and other ones, start laying people off and putting their foot down on people on pricing. Now there’s an alternative, but you don’t have to become technically oriented. You just have it ready to go just like a normal SAS you just start the relationship from free to $20 a month up to 300. And you get something that at the end of the year you win because you own it, control it your client owns control it and one last thing because you got me so excited. One of the biggest solutions that we actually do with this, and it’s just I need to clarify this. Most of our best clients are what I call San Diego mafia followers of the Digital Marketer crowd right. So, you know, Perry Belcher and in the whole crew over there and for years been putting out great content a digital marketer, but they always used to be based on Infusionsoft and so on and so forth. Ryan Deiss and the rest. Even Russell Brunson with Click Funnels, but that whole thing everything they’re sold was based upon like getting you to pay huge numbers in the early days for the software. The thing you did with it was I like to call a French eyes or franchisee model, let’s say you have something you and I both have this, I can teach people to be the intermediaries. Right I did this for very famously a bookkeeper client who was one of the best, he had people pay him 3030 600 To learn to be a bookkeeper. And then at the end, it would be like, Oh, shucks, just to get yourself a website and do what I taught you. Yeah. 

But in the end, what he paid me for to bring him was to make it where people get out of the his training, and they’ve got their own ready to go engine their own ready to go system. So let’s say you’re a professional marketer, and you have a bunch of clients, as they just alluded to, we can also teach you show you set up give you a system, that you can create a recurring revenue business with delivering the engine that people are essentially paying you for, but not have to be technically oriented. So an agency or a marketing expert can have 100 clients all with this marketing engine for themselves, but you’re able to, you know, resell it. And that’s something that’s really lost on most people, they just think of it like my one little site. But like, that’s where the real money is in this because everybody gets the same promise and the same deliverable. They’ll still own and control it. And tada.

Chris Davis  41:13  

Yeah, I think I think it’s appropriate everyone. For me to make the invitation to you live here, on the spot, I should say, here on the podcast, suppose I want you to come and show us want you to come up and show us what this would look like, eliminate any confusion. So what we’ll do is we’re going to, we’re going to have you come into the community, and do a private session where we can see all these parts together. Because here, as you’re talking Spencer, here’s what I know. Every so I worked at Active Campaign, I saw what the customer said, I’ve been consulting and coaching for I don’t know how many years I know where people are struggling, people will give me access to their CRM in ways that I’d be like, Man, you didn’t even really check me out. And it’s like giving your baby to a stranger, there’s a lot of valuable information, you might have wanted to, you know, whatever. But when I go in here, 80% of the time, sir, maybe even more, maybe even more, they’re using a fraction, maybe 10 to 15% of that platform, but they’re paying for the promise of it all. So I’ve, I’ve learned that basic marketing, executed consistently will produce more results than advanced platforms that I don’t know how to properly leverage. And that’s what’s appealing to me is that you can give them everything that they need to get their basic marketing and beyond, but just basic marketing in place, for a cost that’s not going to break the bank. Right now again, at the time of recording this. I mean, prices of eggs are astronomical, like everything is just

Spencer Forman  42:55  

going I love eggs, by the way, I had to go to Costco to buy like, the big box. But

Chris Davis  43:00  

yes, everything is rising. The cost is like something’s going to happen. I don’t know. I’m not an economist. I don’t know. It’s an it’s an

Spencer Forman  43:07  

it’s a natural, like I started interrupt you but like, I like to call it a snowglobe situation. Yeah, right. Because when you’re around long enough, as I’ve been You see, every 10 years or so a snow globe gets shaken up. Yep, that’s the opportune moment. Because that’s the imbalance of the post COVID thing and the corporate ownership thing and the NFT and the crypto thing and now the Twitter thing, like all these things, come together to shake it up. But now we’ve got this technology. And I don’t want to interrupt your train of thought. But like, to your point, I would love to show people because the situation that exists right now is that the tools have always been there. 

But they’ve always required somebody to just like, go back to that BMW, like, well, here’s your BMW in a kit, that you get to, you know, put together at home and like, you know, really just want to. And the other part of it is how do people make money in the new economy? Well, with the AI and so forth, I’ve done some recent videos on this. These are just new versions of tools that will require people with expertise, so that now there’s a layer of what I call human beings, teaching the people one step below them what they need to do. So instead of being sad, like, Oh, I’m out of a job, it’s like, wait a second, everybody is now gonna have some AI and the normal business owner, shop owner, whatever, they need somebody to implement that for them using the other layer. And so what we and I personally have aim to deliver is literally the same thing I’ve been doing since I was 10 years old is that I looked for things that you know, the kids at camp didn’t have a comic book. And so I rented comic books, right. So in today’s world, it’s that there’s technology that has always been a little too complex, a little too expensive. The corporate interests are all shaken up the snowglobe that makes an opportunity for anybody who has, let’s say, people skills to create a new business around using tools that doesn’t require them to be technical, but you just have to be one step ahead. The person next door to you. But that’s how it works anyway, right? Like a Christmas movie. What’s a good restaurant? What did you have today? What’s your favorite iPhone app? That’s human nature?

Chris Davis  45:08  

Yeah. And I think the big piece here is the fact that the technological advancements have enabled this because I’ve been a WordPress user for a while. And even the themes, I started off using Genesis framework where I had to code PHP into modules and do all of that to the drag and drop builders now. It’s just like, wow, technology has really gone to a place. And again, I am I know that there’s new SAS products out there, really shaking up the space to I know, go high level is one where people are using and saying, Oh, look, I can sell it as my own. I just there’s something appealing and I don’t I just don’t see a lot of a lot of noise. Good noise around expensive. So I’m excited to have you on to show us exactly what this looked like. Don’t worry listeners, if you’re a part of the community, you’ll you’ll have access to this. If you want to join the community, make sure you go to ASD premium.com Ford slash community, but just give you the floor Spencer put it together and show us some people this may be their first time hearing about fluence CRM. And they may have been typing as we’re talking and like how does he do it? He said he’s so just a good run through of it all will be amazing. Spencer, I could talk to you for days for those who I just exposed to you. Where can they go and learn find out more connect get some more of this wonderful WordPress insight? Where should they go? Okay,

Spencer Forman  46:35  

I appreciate that. And by the way, I just want to say I’m, I couldn’t be more excited because like I said, we talked a year ago, and this was all coming up. But now things move fast. And now we’re back and I think anyway, right? And the simplicity part you I just want to emphasize, I couldn’t agree more that I’m a pilot and you learn to fly with just visual. But if you see a 747 a big airplane, in modern Airbus, they have a million gauges. Most people have that feeling and a CRM or whatever you don’t need that for the stuff we’re talking about. Basic marketing is just putting somebody in your system, making sure they’re tagged at least at a minimum, so you don’t lose them for future things. And then we can baby step you like just have one email the follow up, but you get so lost in the fact I’m paying $500 a month, what am I gonna do? Okay, so we’re going to talk about that. And I do feel like there’s the thing that I already do and what you already do come together like peanut butter and chocolate. We’ve got like a delicious treat for people like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. You know what I mean? 

Like they were meant to be together. All right, so Spencer forman.com, there’s no, it’s in the title here. No II and for me, I have the three pillars of what I do. WP launch fi consulting launch flows, which is the software that I write that complements our WP fusion plugin and WooCommerce. But it’s just one feature that handles the sales funnel behavior. And then third thing is the free and fun training and other educational stuff at WP launch club. If you scroll down or click the you know, what’s new content, you’ll see, I publish almost every day something exactly along the lines of what we just discussed and what your audience would be interested in, including live shows and videos. And I think it’ll give people good flavor of man, I hope they feel the same as I’m saying that I just tapped into a goldmine here because this will really change the leverage. There’s virtually zero risk. There’s no obligation or cost. I’m not selling something. I’m selling the information that this has always been here. And now the timing is right to reconsider how one goes about doing the stuff you’re doing on an expensive platform.

Chris Davis  48:41  

Absolutely. Well, I can’t thank you enough, Spencer, I’m so excited. Like I’m, I’m ready. I feel like we should just go right into it. You know, it’d be great, we

Spencer Forman  48:51  

set it up next time, we will have the right. I’ll put together like a version of this that really touches on those points you brought out that are important to your audience, because it could do everything. But we don’t want to show everything that would be too confusing. Let’s just start with the basics. Like you know, with the basics, yeah.

Chris Davis  49:06  

So we’ll have that training underway for you all. By the time you all hear this podcast, it’d be ready. So you can go and log into the community or check out now and join the community. Spencer, thank you so much. It’s always good to connect with you to reconnect with you to stay connected with you on LinkedIn and see all your posts and just you’re you’re you’re my guy, you’re my guy with all things WordPress. If there’s a question of a plugin, all I have to do as a dispenser recommend it.

Spencer Forman  49:36  

I want to give a shout out by the way, because we’re both relationship based and our audiences are precious to us. I mean, that’s my most valuable commodity outside my name. Shout out to Carrie Kreiger Dr. Kerrie Kreiger, who is a mutual clients, I would say now friend, he’s been working with me for years now and he’s a great success story for both the mechanical and the other stuff I offer and the marketing and other stuff that you offer. And he’s the one that actually encouraged us to get together in this timely fashion. Literally.

Chris Davis  50:05  

Shout out to Kerrie. And by the way, he’s a certified partner in the nonprofit space. If you’re trying to leverage technology more effectively for your nonprofit Kerrie is the man automation bridge.com. You can find them in our directory, reach out to them, let them know you heard the podcast and we both pointed you there. Absolutely. Again, Spencer, thank you so much, man. I greatly appreciate it. And I’ll see you online. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday, so make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out on while you’re at it. Please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly. And you can access them all at allsystemsgopodcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly my friends