On our latest episode of the GoWP Digital Agency Owners Podcast, we welcome Kronda Adair! Founder and CEO of Karvel Digital. We talk about diversity, how she became a WordPress developer, content awareness, and much more.

Read the transcript:

Morayo: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to the GoWP digital agency owners podcast, where we chat with impressive members of our WordPress community and go behind the website to find out the secrets to their professional and life success. I’m Morayo Orija GoWP’s director of Creative Services. And.

Joanne: [00:00:19] I am Joanne Torres and I just want to say a couple of words about GoWP in case anyone isn’t fully familiar with us yet. At GoWP, we create happiness for digital agencies and help them become more profitable. Whether it’s joining in our incredibly valuable weekly calls, our happiness hour call on Friday, or if you’re just looking to grow your team with a developer, a copywriter, a designer, or a project manager.

Whatever it is that you need, we’ve got you covered. We also have services like our case studies, service, blogging, website maintenance, content edits, or page builds that you can completely outsource to our amazing team.

Morayo: [00:01:02] They sure can. Joanne, why don’t you tell them how they can find out more about GoWP services?

Joanne: [00:01:08] Yeah, they can find out more at gowp.com or on our social media channels. GoWP support on Twitter and GoWP everywhere else. So Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to receive any updates of what’s going on, but now we shall welcome our guests.

Morayo: [00:01:27] Yes. Today, our guest is Kronda Adair, a self-described recovering WordPress developer, but she’s better known as the founder / CEO of Karvel digital. She launched the Portland-based agency in 2013, providing WordPress consultations and developer services for clients. And more recently has gained a great reputation as an effective marketing automation specialist.

She’s a writer, public speaker, podcaster, and all-around content-shaping machine. At GoWP, we’re true believers in Kronda and her methods and feel very honored that she’s sharing her brilliance with us today. Welcome, Kronda.

Kronda: [00:02:06] Thank you so much for having me. I know when you announced this at happy hour, I was like, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I volunteer as tribute.

Joanne: [00:02:17] Yeah, that’s awesome. And I just want to say, immediately Kronda wasn’t even one minute on the call this was before recording, and we were already finding ways that we could automate our processes within the podcast. And it was honestly amazing. So it was just immediately as we started.

I just can’t wait to get into it today because right from the get-go, she was on it. Every time you’re on screen, I’m like, so impressed.

Kronda: [00:02:45] You’ll get my 5-cent invoice later.

Morayo: [00:02:47] Yeah, I was just about to say, and she did it for free. Oh,

Joanne: [00:02:53] Thought too quickly. Morayo you thought too quickly.

Morayo: [00:02:58] Let’s start, that title, recovering WordPress developer very intriguing admission. So we have to begin there. you share online Kronda that you decided to become a programmer at the age of 34. I believe I saw that on your LinkedIn page and Yeah and I love that because I think, you know, there’s, it’s such a fallacy for people to believe that our, our career and our life paths are cemented when we’re 17 years old.

You know, a freshman in college and picking a major or trying to decide to go to college or not. So how did life’s turns lead you to discover web development and WordPress when you did? Or was it that you were always interested and just finally decided at 34, I’m going to die. I’m going to dive in.

Kronda: [00:03:39] Yeah. No, definitely not that one. So I think as of last year I changed to recovered. So I think I’m fully recovered. I think I’m in remission. And so how I got here I definitely did not have this career on my radar at all. I was one of those people that didn’t, you know, when they ask you in high school, like, oh, what do you want to be when you grow up or whatever?

I’m like, I have no idea. I just, I kinda knew I didn’t want to have a boss. I don’t even think I could articulate it cause there’s nobody really entrepreneurial in my family or that they share. And so I just was not a great employee to start. And I was working for a little startup, tiny little startup and

I was working as a project manager and I had a meeting with a freelance developer that we were working with and he literally sauntered in with a jaunty little cap and his laptop. And we had a meeting about something. I couldn’t even tell you what it was. And he left. And I was like, That looks cool. So I went back to my desk and I just started Googling, like, how do I become a developer?

I remember I had asked, there was a developer on our team and I had asked like, oh, what’s CSS. And he tried to explain it to me. And at the end of the explanation, I was like, I still don’t understand that, but whatever. So from that, I went to like, oh yeah, I’m going to do this. And so I just started in a community college and I transferred to the art Institute.

And so I have my degree in web design and interactive media. At the time that I went to school, it was very much like you were a designer or you would, you were a developer. And so. I really wasn’t sure what I wanted. And so I chose the art Institute because they were one of the few places where you could kind of delve into both.

And so I figured out pretty quickly like design is cool, but it’s not really my thing. Like I recognize good design. I like good design, but coming up with it and trying to be artistic in that way, like just wasn’t my thing. So I really leaned into the developer part of it. And once I had my first job and got fired from my first job.

I was like, oh, it’s time to hang out my shingle. So I went straight into doing WordPress websites.

Morayo: [00:05:49] Something, you said a moment ago about knowing very early on that you did not want to have a boss and that you wanted to be in a position to hang out your own shingle. I think might even be that tendency might have gone as far back as when you were born. I like to I’m really into birth order and when, how that impacts us.

I, from a little snooping, I found out that you’re one of six children, is that correct. Is my snooping accurate?

My question is where are you in the birth order? And, you know, and then we can evaluate maybe if that influenced your leadership style and personality and communication later.

Kronda: [00:06:26] So I’m second in the birth order, but I’m curious if it skews the results because I didn’t grow up with all my siblings in the same house. We have one dad and four different moms. So I grew up with my older sister up until around age 12 or 13. And then it was just me, my mom, and my younger sister, not my youngest.

Yeah. She’s the youngest. No, she’s not the youngest girl. But it was me and my full sister. We have the same parents and my mom and we just kind of grew up. So functionally, I guess I was the oldest for all intents and purposes for a lot of my childhood.

Morayo: [00:07:04] What’s the, what’s the age gap between you and your sister? Younger

Kronda: [00:07:07] So my older sister’s two years older than me and then I’ve got a sister five years younger and then a sister 12 years younger.

Morayo: [00:07:12] And you lived with the one that was 12 years

Kronda: [00:07:18] That was 12 years younger. Yeah. So I used to do terrible things. Like I wanted to tell her like all the wrong colors, you know, I wanted to tell her that like blue was yellow and green was purple and I dunno, I used to give her these little like Hitler hairdos when she was a baby.

Like I just comment friend split. Don’t ask me why I was so terrible. But yeah, we, it was like 12 years. I was supposed to be the mature one, but that didn’t happen. And then when she could talk, you know, we would fight, like they were two work two years between us, like stop touching me,

Morayo: [00:07:51] What’s her first name?

Kronda: [00:07:53] Tracy.

Morayo: [00:07:54] Tracy. Tracy. If you’re out there listening, this is a safe space. If you want to come on air and talk this out, Kronda can be here or not. We, this might need to be addressed because She’s laughing maniacally at you right now, Tracy. We’re here for you.

Kronda: [00:08:11] She’s not innocent in this scenario though. She’s the one who like, you know if mom would say something like go dry your bath, water. Guess what would happen? Come back with some

Morayo: [00:08:22] All right. Right, right. She’s not got that. Right. Right. Brain going.

Joanne: [00:08:27] Save the red table talk for another time,

Kronda: [00:08:29] Oh my God. Right. That’s another episode.

Joanne: [00:08:32] Another episode. But do you think that the eldest in this context, do you think that impacted your leadership role as like founder CEO or your communication style? Can you connect those dots or?

Kronda: [00:08:46] Oh, possibly. I think it’s more to do with our mom though, because of the absolute role model that she was. I mean, you know, people loved my mom. She sadly passed away in 2007. People love my mom and people were afraid of my mom in equal measure. And, you know, she just really modeled for us how to move through the world in a way that commands respect.

And I think that has like so much to do with sort of how I am as a person.

Morayo: [00:09:13] Yeah. Awesome. What was your mom’s first name?

Kronda: [00:09:16] Gina.

Morayo: [00:09:17] Gina way to go. Gina. I know you’re. I know you can hear us, in spirit, so great job with your daughter Kronda. But you should have been watching her around Tracy.

Kronda: [00:09:26] She knows her colors. It’s fine.

Joanne: S[00:09:30] She’s actually a designer now. Okay. All right. Well, Do you want to take this next one Morayo?

Morayo: [00:09:39] Well, I was just going to say, it’s nice that we’re laughing now as we shift gears and segue into this next topic, you’re welcome to join if you want, or I’m finding it either way.

Joanne: [00:09:44] I’m fine with anyway. Yeah. I mean, I can laugh about anything. I try to find a sense of humor in everything, so there’s no topic too dark. But it is true that in the WordPress opportunities, there are a lot of opportunities in WordPress to lead issues in terms of diversity and inclusion.

And it’s not really a conversation that we’ve been able to explore this in-depth to the depth. We’d like to, so that is something that we would like to talk about. And it can be tricky because depending on your background and depending on like who you are, who you are asking these questions, it may marginalize some voices that it seeks to engage. So we would always love to talk about these, especially like me I’m Dominican. So that is some people say it’s Afro Latino or Latina. I think Dominican, Morayo as a black woman. And I’m not sure how you self-identify Kronda.

Kronda: [00:10:45] Just plain old African-American born in Eugene, Oregon.

Joanne: [00:10:50] There you go. Yeah. It’s always exciting to speak with a successful CEO who just happened to be an African American woman in the WordPress community. So perhaps we can start from the premise that all professional communities will continue to evolve just like our society, but in your opinion, how can the WordPress community ensure it evolves better or sooner than later than other professional community. And I want to ask you specifically as Kronda, you’re not representing a whole group of people.

Kronda: [00:11:25] Yeah, no, I never, I was never wanting to take that on. And it’s funny because when I started as a developer and I started my career by going to WordPress meetups and I found, you know, they would have the section where you announce if you need help or you are offering help. And so that was where I got my first client.

So I was very much embedded in the WordPress community. I would say for the first, at least the first four or five years of my career. And it looks, it looks a lot like the rest of the tech community and something I wish I could remember who used to tweet this all the time, but she’d be like, you know, the easiest way to hire more black people is to hire black people.

Joanne: [00:12:06] That’s it.

Kronda: [00:12:07] And I think we just, we over-complicate, and it’s like if you want diversity. If you’re in your space, then go seek out those people and go start building relationships with those people. Because what do we do when we’re trying to hire, we start, we go to our network. So if your network is just a bunch of white dudes, that’s who you’re going to go to and that’s what you’re going to get.

So I think it really is as simple as that, and it’s really on white people, you know, if they want to be fixing this to be doing that work and going and seeking out those relationships. And there are so many resources to help do that. Like if you don’t know how, and I think whenever we have an issue that involves, you know, code or leadership or whatever it is, what do people do?

They go do research. They go find experts. They get a coach, they hire a professional. All of those options are the same. If you want to build a diverse company or a diverse community, like all of those same options are available to you. And so if it’s important, then go put some time and money behind it and work on it.

Morayo: [00:13:09] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that was a wonderful response. And I think just to add to that you know, Joanne and I were talking offline about best intentions that often fail and like you said, the answer is more simple than we make it sometimes. We all have the same goals, you know, as, as agency owners, you know, we want to grow and scale and to have a healthy body.

And as employees, we all want to you know, grow and to have positive outcomes as well. And I know that in my professional experience over the years, when this topic comes up, everyone says they are interested in doing it, but then they get weird about it. You know, just start from the premise that we all want.

The same thing, have the conversation. And the one thing you know, I’m new to the WordPress space. So, but I feel like in any space in any industry, there has to be the willingness to say we are a community and we’re all heading in the same direction. So don’t have the conversation that, you know, like you said, research, if it’s something, if it’s a goal, you have research, find out the best way.

Don’t just go stabbing away, blindly

Kronda: [00:14:19] Yeah, you’re doing lot of harm in the process.

Morayo: [00:14:23] Yeah. Just start from the premise that we all want the same thing and a cool. Yeah. I think we can move on to the next level. We solved it. Ladies. There we go.

Joanne: [00:14:30] We did a Jo we solved that.

Morayo: [00:14:34] I hope you’re listening a fortune 500 companies. We got it right here.

Joanne: [00:14:39] The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That’s what I will say to that, about that.

Morayo: [00:14:44] And HR offices too. So please make

Kronda: [00:14:47] Right. Okay.

Morayo: [00:14:48] And you know, this would probably be, I’m going to built this over to you because you are GoWPs content queen. So we’re going to talk about content next.

Joanne: [00:15:57] Yeah, content. I mean it’s yeah. Our segway is, are not the best

Morayo: [00:15:02] They’re a little bumpy today.

Joanne: [00:15:03] We’re a little bumpy in the service. It’s all good.

Kronda: [00:15:07] Progress, not perfection.

Joanne: [00:15:09] Yeah, done is better than perfect. We were just saying on a previous episode, so yeah, because speaking of bumpy roads, content is the perfect vehicle for business owners to reach potential clients.

Morayo: [00:15:23] We’re here all week folks tip.

Joanne: [00:15:28] Usually, and those business owners want to alleviate their various pain points. So we know that with content creation that can feel intimidating for a variety of reasons. So it could be the fear of writing or if you have a fear of writing the blog, doesn’t get done the fear of public speaking.

So any invitation to a podcast or a webinar that’s declined, or the fear of not having any like the right ideas, right. So you won’t publish anything. So, and you delivered. Fabulous webinar for our, our audience here at GoWP called creating content that sells. We spoke about owners being content-aware.

So can you explain a little bit what is content awareness and the fundamental misstep or misunderstanding of content you most frequently see among business owners? Loaded question.

Kronda: [00:16:22] Okay. So content awareness is really an understanding of the role of content in your business and the importance of content in your business. And I’ll give you a really good example from this week. They have a resource it’s called the content marketing pot of gold. It’s an air table database that is structured to help you categorize your content.

Like if you had a physical store and you sold physical goods, you would keep track of those things. Right. And you would take inventory of those things. So we create all this content as business owners, or maybe it’s someone on your team. And then we put it, we publish it. And then it exists, you know, all over the internet.

And there’s no one place for, I would say 99% of business owners. There’s no one place that you can go and say, these are our content assets. This is our inventory of content. And so content unaware, people are just like creating these things. They’re like spending their lives on Instagram. They’re making reels, TikToks, whatever blogs, you know, and it’s just all out there and there’s no one place that you can collect it.

And so then what happens is. You are putting yourself on the hamster wheel of constantly having to create. So then, you know, we get exhausted, right? Cause we’re just like, when does it? Well, it never ends cause you, you, we’re not reusing stuff effectively. And truly this week, somebody came into my free service CEO’s Facebook group and she was like, Hey, just dropping by to let you know that I almost spent 10 hours creating these workshops slides. And I just happened to do a random search and figure out that, oh, I already made this. I already, you know, before I spent 10 hours doing this and she’s like, so moral of the story by the pot of gold, use the pot of gold.

Right. Cause people buy it, but then you have to actually use it. Like, for me, it’s like a muscle. Like somebody asks me a question, I’m going to go into mine, you know I have it, it’s tab, it’s always open and it takes me 30 seconds to a minute to be like, oh, here’s the podcast that answers that question. Right. But that is a skill and a muscle that you have to develop or someone on your team has to develop.

So first you have to like, realize it’s important to understand like the benefits because people get overwhelmed, like, oh, I got to go collect all my content, you know, and I actually show you like ways to shorten that process like I do a little course when people buy it. So you’ve got to realize what the benefits are going to be so that you will get over the hump of like, collecting what you’ve already done in one place and then establish the habit of, you know, continually cataloging what you have to do.

And so the reason I love air table for that is because it just, it makes it easy to create different views and see different slices of your information without having to reenter and copy it all the time and so it really allows you to say like, oh, let’s categorize our content by stage in the funnel.

What do we have that’s top of the funnel? What do we have that’s middle of the funnel? What do we have this bottom of the funnel? Right? It just allows you to kind of step back and see things in a broader sense so that you can start to get strategic and start to plan a customer journey.

Morayo: [00:19:18] And if I can skip ahead. You mentioned air table as your tool for organizing this catalog. In one of the webinars that you did with us, you also referenced the 10 by 10 content matrix that you go through with clients to, for ideation. Do you use those items in tandem with your clients?

Kronda: [00:19:38] Yeah. So I think the free version of the 10 by 10 that you can find on my website is just a Google doc, just to keep it simple for people so that there are no barriers. The concept is just amazingly simple. It’s like you pick 10 subjects sent 10 categories of information that you would like to be known for, or that your audience needs to hear about right.

Or beliefs that they need to have in order to buy from you. So you have 10 main topics, and then you think of 10 sub-topics under each of those 10 things. And then you have a hundred ideas of content that you can create.

Morayo: [00:20:12] And I love you pointed out in the, in the webinar for those business owners who were like, well, I can’t do that. You know, here’s the tool. I still can’t do that. And you said, you can do this in less than two hours and you can have 100

Kronda: [00:20:24] Yeah, yeah, I’ve done it. You know, I used to actually walk clients through the exercise when they would come in and they’re like, we’re never going to think of this many ideas. Like never had anybody go away with less than, you know, maybe 80 or 90 ideas.

Morayo: [00:20:36] Amazing.

Kronda: [00:20:37] In in a couple of hours.

So it’s just, that sometimes you just need another person to kind of be there and pull it out of you.

Joanne: [00:20:43] I think a good soundboard or just someone who like who’s a good encourager as well.

Kronda: [00:20:49] Yeah, yeah.

Joanne: [00:20:50] And where can people, if they’re interested, find these amazing strategies that you’re offering, some of them for free, some of them paid work and they find them.

Kronda: [00:21:00] You go to carveldigital.com/profitable-content you can grab that resource that’ll walk you through the 10 by 10. And then you’ll get, you’ll get added to my resource vault that has all the goodies. So you’ll be able to just like Amazon. Oh, you may also like, you can see all the other things that are available including the pot of gold.

You can buy that resource and I have workshops and things. So I have a nice little ladder of things for people to kind of get started if they want to see like, oh, does this chick really know what she’s talking about?

Morayo: [00:21:30] And she does. You can just peruse her testimonial, she knows her stuff for sure. I want to take a step back though, Rhonda before individuals or your clients can get here. You stress knowing really narrowing down who your audience truly is and honing that the niche that you are.

I read somewhere you said that it took you about when you started your, your agency that it took you about five years to really know who your audience was. That sounds a bit daunting. Is that for, I mean, maybe it makes to my lay woman’s ears, they sound, that sounds a bit daunting. Do you, do you think it’s possible for a new agency, to really know their niche in less than five years?

And if that’s possible, how do they do it?

Since you’ve been through it?

Kronda: [00:22:19] I mean, when I started, I didn’t really even understand the concept of a niche. So if you’re listening to this, you’re already ahead. Right. Cause you’re like, oh, I should figure it out. But here’s the thing. People try to think their way to a niche and that’s you, you can’t really do that. And so the sooner you dive in and actually just start serving clients the sooner you can narrow that down because I was just serving clients.

I wasn’t thinking like, oh, I need to narrow this down. When I did finally understand my concept and the value of doing it. What I did was I looked back at who have I been serving and who, you know, who did I like working with the most? What did they have in common who got the most benefit out of my services?

What did they have in common? Like you need that history of actually doing the work. And one of my mentors loves to say you can’t steer a parked car. So, you know, you can think your way into, okay, these are some niches I think might work. And now I’m going to go, just start serving clients and don’t be too precious about it in the beginning.

Like just, you know, spend a year, deliver some services and just kind of in the back of your mind, be taking note of like, oh, am I liking this? You know, Do I want to pivot like and so you, you have to get in the trenches to do it, but if you keep in mind, so I’ll give you an example. When I got my first WordPress client, she wanted to give me 40 hours a week of project work.

And I was like, that sounds like a job. And I just left that job and I’m not trying. And so from the moment I, I took her on. It’s like, okay, I have no clients and it’s my first, you know, month in business. So I got to take this client always in the back of my head. I’m like, okay, this is a terrible client.

How much money do I need to make to get rid of her? So it took me eight months to replace that income so that I could fire that client. And it’s because that was my goal. Right. So if your goal is okay, I need to narrow this down and figure out like who I can serve then. Yes, of course you can do it faster.

Morayo: [00:24:11] Yeah. So I think for our listeners, there’s no quick fix. You’ve got to learn by doing and being honest and knowing what you want. So.

Joanne: [00:24:20] And it’s exactly what you were just talking about with being content awareness. It’s a muscle. Everything is a muscle. If you don’t do the work, if you don’t put in the work, if you don’t have that discipline to keep on going and exercising that muscle. It’s never going to become strong. So.

Kronda: [00:24:37] I mean, entrepreneurship is not for the weak, right? I mean, you talked about the barrier, a lot of barriers being about fear. And it’s like, if you’re really going to do the entrepreneurship thing, it’s really more about who you have to become in order to reach your goals. Like, one of my mentors talks about identity, like so much.

It’s like. Become the person that you need to become so that your goals will be inevitable, right? It’s like if you’re Michael Phelps, you go win some swim races. Right. That’s because of who he is, it’s because of his work ethic. It’s because you know of what he does. Think about like, okay, I have the school, you know, I want to have a million-dollar business or whatever it is.

I want to, you know, like get a lot of publicity. I have a business friend who was on good morning America. She said a year ago, she was like, I’m going to be on good morning America. And guess what? This week she’s on good morning, America. It’s like, so who do you have to become in order to make that goal and inevitable.

So, if mindset and fear is an issue for you, then get a mindset coach and deal with that.

Morayo: [00:25:36] I have to say, and I’ll say it here live, you know, You may have been a slightly abusive older

sister who made this possible that’s possible. But I think darn the things you’re saying today, I’m like, that’s golden.

Joanne: [00:25:49] So profound.

Morayo: [00:25:50] She’ll torture you. But in the end, it’s all okay. She’s got great things to say.

Kronda: [00:25:55] Think there’s a true line here because I’m really quite famous for dragging people and having them like it.

Morayo: [00:26:02] One of your testimonials and one of your, I forgot your client’s name, but he said that too

Kronda: [00:26:07] Yeah. I don’t know how it happens, I’m just going to tell you the truth because I think it’s because it comes from love. Right. You know, people who just shine you on and it’s like, emperor’s new clothes, you know, like, oh, you look great. Like when you really look jacked up and you’re trying to go out and like, you try not to go out and look cute and like get into.

And nobody’s going to tell you that you look jacked up and you got toilet paper stuck to your shoe. Like that’s not kind right. Kindness is like telling people the truth so they can get what it is they say they want.

Joanne: [00:26:36] Yeah, absolutely. One of, one of my teachers says don’t be nice, be kind as being nice is so full of like fakeness, and exactly what you were saying that just like puffing you up for what reason? So, yeah, kindness before niceness.

Morayo: [00:26:54] You talked about strength and one of the things that you promote online. Is your great superpower, which we will reveal to the listeners in just a moment, but Joanna and I thought we’d have a little fun with the next question and make it a lightning round question. Do you want to unleash the lightning on Kronda?

Joanne: [00:27:14] I’ll strike it, I guess. Yeah, so, okay. You are the first guest who has listed a superpower on their website. And before we get to your real superpower, we’d like to ask you for a series of potential superpowers. So this is a, would you rather superpower edition. We’ll promise we’ll reveal the real one at the end.

Alright. Oh, I’ll do it with the beginning of the beginning. So your superpower is melding automation with content to save clients more time. Would you rather be the ability to fly or to be invisible?

Kronda: [00:27:55] Fly.

Joanne: [00:27:55] Live healthy for 150 years or travel to another time period?

Kronda: [00:28:02] Live healthy

Joanne: [00:28:03] Go to the moon or to another galaxy? Ability to walk through walls or create fire at will.

Kronda: [00:28:12] Fire.

Joanne: [00:28:13] Be able to move objects with your mind or make them disappear.

Kronda: [00:28:17] Move objects.

Joanne: [00:28:19] All right. That’s our lightning round. And can you talk?

Morayo: [00:28:23] We need a sound effect for this

Joanne: [00:28:24] Yeah, we do. I’ll try to find one in

Kronda: [00:28:27] And put it in, in post.

Morayo: [00:28:28] Yeah, I didn’t post.

Joanne: [00:28:30] Can you tell us a little bit about, I mean, we already experienced it out at the top of the show before even recording it, but for our listeners, could you talk a little bit about your superpower that you say it’s melding automation with content to save clients more time?

Kronda: [00:28:45] Yeah, and not just save time, but also make money. So one example that comes to mind is we do these marketing intensives where we will go in and dig around in your business and see what’s going on with your processes and your marketing.

And so I’m in a meeting with a client and we’re going through their contact form, which has like six different drop-downs of what you might be interested in, in their services. And so we’re like, what’s this what’s, this what’s this. And she was like, oh, That one’s really like a big-money profitable service.

And I said, okay, well, it looks like you have, you know, three or four inquiries from four months ago. Like, has anybody responded? No.

Morayo: [00:29:21] Hmm.

Kronda: [00:29:22] So one automation, right, that says, oh, some inquiry has come in about X service, send a confirmation and then notify someone on your team to get back to that person ASAP.

That’s that’s 50 grand. You know, so it’s not even always about time. I mean, the time factor is also a thing. Like we have a client right now, they’ve got a webinar process and they’re using a webinar or software that I’ve never even heard of and the whole thing is so manual.

Like there’s a little bit of automation, but there’s so many manual processes that they’re doing. And so we’re in the middle of just mapping out the entire thing and being like, robots can do that. Robots can do that. Robots can do that. Like, you know, they’ll do it better. And More consistently than any human and, you know, then you can save humans for the things that humans are really good at.

Right.

Joanne: [00:30:18] Yeah.

Kronda: [00:30:19] So if you’re listening to this and you’re not doing any automation. The first thing I always tell people is just get, like, get your email marketing game together and just get a welcome sequence of, you know, three to five emails that someone gets on your list. And they it’s like the red carpet.

It’s like, oh, you’re here. Welcome. Let me introduce myself. Let me tell you what we’re about. Let me tell you what we do. Let me tell we how we can help you in what to expect from being on this list. Like that is the first thing. And you know, I think every business owner has put up a, like, sign up for our newsletter and then like not actually emailed anyone.

Joanne: [00:30:56] Yeah.

Kronda: [00:30:57] Someone started this conversation and one of one of the groups, Facebook groups that I’m in.

And as a joke, I made a product I think it’s called email, your list, dammit. And it’s just, I don’t actually do anything. It’s just a subscription where you just pay so that you feel the money that you’re losing by not emailing your list. Somebody wants to buy that. We can definitely put that link in the show notes.

If anybody just wants,

Joanne: [00:31:21] I love that. What’s the link to that.

Kronda: [00:31:23] I don’t have it off the top of my head, but I will definitely get it.

Joanne: [00:31:26] Because that is a 100% way to drive a business owner to see like, Hey, you, you want to know what it feels like? It would, it truly feels like this is how much money you’re losing.

Kronda: [00:31:37] My sister used to do this all the time where she’s trying to like either quit a habit or do a habit. And so you sign up for a thing where if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, they’re going to give money to like some charity that you hate.

Right. Or some cause that you hate. Right. I mean, it’s not a new concept, right.

Joanne: [00:31:55] No, I think that’s it’s just, it’s so.

Kronda: [00:31:58] Like, you know, if you want to feel the pain of this consequence that is out of mind right now, like you could just pay me some money.

Morayo: [00:32:05] Oh, wow. Wow.

Kronda: [00:32:08] No one’s bought yet, but oh man. If somebody ever does, like, I’m never going to shut up about.

Morayo: [00:32:14] Something to think about with this. But I love automating, make it save time by automating, make money and what you can do next is go on vacation because you know, I know that you’ve known Brad Morrison. Who’s GoWP CEO.

I know you’ve known him for, for a while and I recall hearing, maybe it was in your GoWP case study.

You talked about telling Brad that you were going on vacation for the first time in a long time. This is a couple of years old, this case study, but, because of automation and working with us you know,

our business of course is outsourcing and it’s so important and sometimes underappreciated by business owners.

And it’s just anybody really about resting the body, disconnecting from work and reconnecting with family, nature, those that you love.

Kronda: [00:33:07] Yeah. We’re going out of town next month with some friends we’re going to go do some cross country skiing and like, yeah, that first vacation was a revelation because I did not check my email. I didn’t take the app off my phone, but I didn’t check my email at all. And it was a hundred percent because of you all, because I was offering WordPress maintenance at the time and, you know, just running myself, ragged, trying to keep up with the requests.

And then I was like, wait a minute. And so, yeah, I mean, it was, it was amazing. And the automation part of it is just, you know, clients send the request, it gets piped through straight to the GoWP team. And I know they’re taking care of, so that’s been, that’s been something that I just, I still value in my business to this day.

Morayo: [00:33:52] Awesome. And you said a week, let’s talk about your week. Tell us about Jessica and I don’t, I don’t know if Obie will be accompanying you on your cross country trip, but tell us about the the, the rest of your clan.

Kronda: [00:34:02] Yeah. So Jess and I have been together, we just had our 16th anniversary on the internet. I said it was 17 and she’s like, you know, it’s only 16. I’m like math, whatever. So yeah, we just celebrated 16 years. And we have Obie is our Vizsla which is if you don’t know that breed, it’s a Hungarian dog. So he’s a, he’s a bird hunting dog. And then we have two cats, Oz and Zander. So yeah, Obie will definitely be going with us and there’s a dog-friendly cross-country ski area. So he will just be living life like running through deep snow and getting tired and.

Morayo: [00:34:39] Is he a puppy?

Kronda: [00:34:41] No, he’s three and a half now.

So we’re moving towards the sweet spot of dog ownership. Keep telling him when he’s five, he’ll be perfect. It’s our first time raising a puppy and it’s, or even like having a dog. And so it was a wild ride there for the teenage months. And now he’s, he’s a pretty chill dude at home.

Morayo: [00:34:59] It’s a beautiful breed. Michael Short, who’s our what is his title? He’s our director of sales. I’m not sure what his actual sales manager or something. He has the same breed. I think he has three dogs in total, but that’s one that he has beautiful dogs.

Kronda: [00:35:11] Yeah, they’re great dogs. Yeah. So he rules our lives basically. Like we revolve everything around him.

Morayo: [00:35:19] And you’re in Portland. I’ve never been, I’ve lived on the west coast, but I never made my way up to the Pacific Northwest, but It’s just such a gorgeous.

Kronda: [00:35:27] Beautiful.

Morayo: [00:35:29] What do you all love most about?

Kronda: [00:35:30] You know, it’s the diversity of like me, if you’re an outdoors person, it’s a great place to be because, you know, from where we are, we can go an hour and a half and, and do mountains. We can go two hours to the ocean. We can go, you know, a few hours to the desert. Like we can really have like all of these different things.

So it’s really great. We have I had never been to. Crater Lake, which is and before I met Jess, she was like, what do you mean you grew up here? And you’ve never been to Crater Lake, but you know, my people didn’t camp and we didn’t, we, we did outdoorsy things, but we didn’t camp. So we went to Crater Lake for the first time.

Probably a year after we met and like rode our bikes around the whole thing, took us nine hours. Cause we stopped at every single viewpoint. We talked to a woman who wrote around the whole thing in three hours and never stopped. And like, what is the point of that? Exactly.

Joanne: [00:36:22] Yeah, that sounds like more of a task rather than a vacation.

Kronda: [00:36:27] Yes. Like, no, I’m gonna get all these views.

Joanne: [00:36:30] Yeah, no shame of like that or judgment if that’s what you prefer,

Kronda: [00:36:34] How you roll, but

Joanne: [00:36:35] If that’s how you roll it, that’s how you roll. But to me personally, in my opinion, it’s more like a task than a vacation.

And in terms of the future. So what are you looking forward to accomplishing this year?

For Karvel digital?

Kronda: [00:36:52] Oh, so right now we are hiring a new marketing assistant to replace an amazing team member who is moving on to higher callings. So we’re doing that and we’re really just focused on streamlining. We’re solidly at the point where as a business owner, I am very susceptible to whatever shiny object idea.

This is the phase I’m in right now where we’re commonly business owners say, oh yeah, we have this service. Or we have this product or whatever, but what if we did this right. That’s where we are. And I’m super committed to not doing that and just going super deep into the things that we’re offering right now.

So we have our 12 week content bootcamp for business owners and that’s for folks. That’s like, if you really have. Like gotten momentum in your marketing. You haven’t figured out that content thing and how to make it work for you. This bootcamp will help you do that. And I see such a clear difference in the before and after of my clients, like looking at what they’re putting out into the world.

So we’re doing that and we’re just figuring out, like, how do we, you know, how do we make that better? How do we structure it? How many people should we have in at one time, all that kind of stuff. And then on the agency side we have insourced and that’s our done for you? It was really created out of, you know, I quit everything and it just focused on coaching for a while.

And then when it started to work, my clients were like, oh, our tech sucks. And now we care because our marketing is working. And I was like, oh, well, I mean, I could fix that for you. So, so I created insourced as sort of the encompassing, like, okay, you’ve got content and you’ve got a sales process that is manually working for you.

Like you show up and you do these things and it works. Now let’s dig in and create a system around that. So you can go focus on other parts of your business, which are also important. Like you got to serve your clients, you got to manage your finances. You might want to give those things some attention and not be stuck, spending 80% of your energy on marketing all the time.

So let’s build you a system to relieve that pressure. You know, maybe you can put a team member in place of really like doing the bulk of that heavy lifting. So recreate those. And so I’m just constantly refining, you know, our onboarding processes and what we’re delivering and how we’re working with clients.

And just recently created a consulting model for folks who are like, okay, We’ve been through and we’ve got our systems together and we have a technical team who can implement, but we still need that strategy. We still need to, you know, what’s the next step to keep improving? So those are kind of the three things that we’re focused on.

I’m really looking at doubling revenue from last year and getting over that half a million mark for the year and doing it like in an easeful manner, like with not a ton of clients.

Morayo: [00:39:36] It sounds like nothing but good things.

Kronda: [00:39:38] Yeah, I’m super excited.

Morayo: [00:39:41] Yeah. Well, and please come back on the podcast and, you know, tell us, you know, where you are with this. I think everything that you’re doing just sounds great and inspirational.

Joanne: [00:39:52] We should regroup like in six months or in a couple of quarters, I don’t know how just to say.

Kronda: [00:39:57] A fall, a fall report,

Joanne: [00:39:59] Yeah, just to see, just to see, where did you fall susceptible of that shiny new thing, or if you did it to see

Kronda: [00:40:06] I’m staying fast. I’m.

Morayo: [00:40:08] Yeah, I’m putting my Kronda. She’s not going to yeah.

Joanne: [00:40:11] Me too,

Morayo: [00:40:12] Ignoring the shiny thing.

Joanne: [00:40:13] Either way, it’s an adventure.

Morayo: [00:40:17] And because we at GoWP, we put such a, a high priority on creating happiness. Can you take us out with sharing how you create happiness for yourself? We have an idea, but I’ll let you have your official statement.

Kronda: [00:40:30] I mean, it, it changes, I I’m really big on doing whatever, whatever is bringing me joy at that particular time. So like we took one of the things that I’m really proud about is that for the past two years, we’ve been able to take two weeks off completely at the end of December, something I always wanted to do.

And I was too broke to do. So was really happy to achieve that milestone. And I played a lot of Galaga on my iPad. Like if you’re a gamer, like the old school arcade Galaga, like they have a mobile version and I looked at the like, maybe. A month into playing it. I looked at the reviews, the reviews are terrible.

The reviews complain about like, it takes so long to get the upgrades and this and that. I started to enjoy that. It was kind of hard and I like finished every level, like before my break was over. And I was like, I did that. I made a TikTok about Galaga,

Joanne: [00:41:26] Oh, wow.

Kronda: [00:41:27] So yeah. But like that and like reading books.

Getting massages. I just, one of my favorite massage people just started offering services again because COVID and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, so I’m all about just like things that are relaxing and chill. And then of course, you know, being out with the dogs, so we have a lot of good spots. So we go out and hike with them and some about just seeing a dog running around, like doing dog things.

I mean, you can’t, you can’t really be unhappy when you’re doing that.

Morayo: [00:41:56] Right. And I know this is a WordPress community and everyone’s welcome, but I’m sorry. I got to give a shout out. You mentioned Galaga gen X. We are where it’s at gen X Galaga.

Sorry, Joanne. I’m sorry

Joanne: [00:42:09] I had a Nintendos sidekick. I don’t know if you guys know what it was. That little Nintendo that looked like a sidekick, like a sidekick phone, and the only game I would play was Galaga. I love Galaga so much. I’m now.

Kronda: [00:42:24] The arcade version.

Joanne: [00:42:27] Think it was, I mean, it was hard like

Kronda: [00:42:29] I killed at Tetris though.

Morayo: [00:42:31] Right. Oh, you’re taking me back, Kronda. You’re taking me back.

Joanne: [00:42:37] I feel like I played Tetris every time I’m packing my grocery bag. It’s just like, ah,

Kronda: [00:42:40] Yeah.

Joanne: [00:42:41] I feel like that strategy mindset really comes in handy. I mean, Tetris really helped.

Kronda: [00:42:47] When you’re packing for trips when you’re yeah. I’m the one that had the packs, the car.

Morayo: [00:42:53] See, all skills gained from childhood in game playing. And I have to just say that the rush of trying to change the shape before it gets to the bar. Oh, But

Kronda: [00:43:05] Yep. But a good time.

Morayo: [00:43:07] You got get the good time kind.

Joanne: [00:43:08] Was more of like a kind of adrenaline kind of thing,

Kronda: [00:43:12] Totally

Joanne: [00:43:13] Closer to adrenaline while times over here, the adrenaline from Tetris

Morayo: [00:43:19] I love it. I love it.

Joanne: [00:43:21] Or while the dude in here. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

Morayo: [00:43:24] No, no, no. I was just, you know, just celebrating this conversation. It’s been great. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much Kronda for coming and talking with us today and sharing all of your brilliance and your excellence. It’s just been, I’ve been taking notes on, you know, not just the conversation.

What to bring up next, but just because it’s like, yeah, that’s really good. That’s a good point that she makes. So if you’ve been listening and you have just fallen in love with, you know, Kronda’s outlook, like we have, you can read more about her, her work. And you can read more about Karvel digital@ karveldigital.com.

That’s K-A-R-V-E-L digital.com.

Kronda: [00:44:04] Thank you so much for having me.

Morayo: [00:44:05] Absolutely.

Joanne: [00:44:06] Yeah, it was a total joy I’m so glad you were able to join us. It’s yeah, don’t forget to like and subscribe and you can get this podcast and this episode at the GoWP, digital agency owners podcast, wherever you get your podcasts again, Kronda, thank you so much for joining us.

And just a quick reminder for everyone who’s listening, who’s listening so far. At GoWP we want to help you become more profitable, whether it’s by listening to our podcasts or joining in our weekly happiness hours, or viewing informative webinars, hosted by our friends in the WordPress community, such as Kronda.

And of course, by growing your team with our skilled developers, copywriters designers, or project managers, Go to gowp.com to read more about our services and to schedule a call. Thank you so much.