Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 30 of the PressForward podcast. I’m Nathan Wrigley, and I’d like to thank you for joining us again, and if this is your first time with us, well, I really hope that you like it and that you find it useful. We’d love it if you added us to your list of podcasts that you consume regularly, and you can do this by subscribing to us on your favorite podcast player. This can be done by going to WP and whop.org forward slash podcast dash feed. Today we’re going to be talking to Vito Peleg, but before that, let me tell you a little bit about why we’re making this podcast. The PressForward podcast is created by WP and UP. If you’ve heard this podcast before, then you’ll know about their mission, but if you’re new around here, then let me take a moment to explain. A little. WP and UP are a nonprofit working in the WordPress space. They are here to offer support and mentorship to anyone who feels that they may need it. The confines of that support are wider than you might expect. Along with supporting mental health related issues. You might not know who that WP and UP. Also try to assist with other areas too. Broadly speaking, we have four health hubs, mental health, as I just mentioned, physical health, business, health and skills, health, but what does all that mean? I think that the mental and physical health aspects are slightly more obvious. But what about business and skills health? Well, business health is about supporting you and your business. You might be facing a new challenge in your business too much or too little growth, working to create new processes. The list could be truly endless, but it’s likely that someone has been there before you and worked through a similar problem. And their mentorship might be just what you need to get yourself on the right path. Skills health is about the specific skills that you need to carry out your job. This could be a particular WordPress issue or finding out about how to keep up with the ever moving world of technology. At its core, it’s about sharing and linking you up with people who can support you at a time when you feel you need it. This support is free to use, but I’m sure that you’ll understand that WP and UP have costs to bear. For that reason, we’re always on the lookout for people who are willing to donate to our important work. It doesn’t have to be a lot. We’ve been lucky so far to have supporters like WPM, UDEV, and green geeks, but your donation would be most welcome if you’re able to help WP and UP, please visit. WP and UP. Dot org forward. Slash. Donate. Thank you.
The PressForward podcast is brought to you today by green geeks. Green geeks offers an awesome managed web hosting platform that’s built for speed, security, and scalability whilst being environmentally friendly. Enjoy a better web hosting experience for your WordPress website, backed by 24 seven experts support, and we thank green geeks for helping us to put on the PressForward podcast.
Today we hear from Vito Peleg and it’s a fascinating story. He’s an agency owner and the founder of WP feedback. A plugin for working with your WordPress clients. We talk about his highly unusual start in website building from the back of a van whilst touring with his band, how he had to work when he could, and how he juggled two completely different work personas. At the same time, we also talk about his decision to move to website work full time and his desire to grow an agency. How he managed to get this up to 12 people. The issues that arose along the way and how he coped with them and where he looked for support. He’s a very energetic character. And so towards the end, we get into the topic of how he manages to keep his energy going when times are hard. And so without further ado, here’s. Vito pelvic .
Vito Peleg: [00:04:53] My name is Vito and I run a digital agency here in London, and I’m also the author and the founder of a WordPress plugin that is just about to launch. So I actually started building websites from the back of my van when I was touring with a band that I had back then. Basically we were dead broke and I was looking for a way to make a, just like an extra extra money for the end of the month. While we were going around the world, I already had experience building websites, mostly for myself. I had a few kind of, if you remember that AdSense era where you do like a blog and just sprinkle ads all over the place. So I had a few of these that were generating some, some revenue before I Google change their, you know, their things. And I build websites for the bands and for some friends. So it was kind of a natural thing to go into and to start the . Eh, learning, eh, I was already proficient in a, in all of the Adobe softwares and so on. So that was kind of a natural progression to go into web and, yeah. So that I started by building websites from the back of the van, which was amazing for me at the time, but also really stressful. Yeah. Everything is moving all around, you know, and whatever you type you type in twice because the, the keyboard kind of backlashed into the, into the finger. Yeah. It wasn’t easy. And you know, sometimes you get back, you get . Into the venue in the evening and you got to finish the project. So, so the guys were drinking outside and I was sitting in a boom closet, a broom cabinet, you know, just finishing the revision round. You know, that was the basis of it. And I enjoyed it. I actually had fun building websites and, and exploring my creativity in a different way.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:06:25] It all seems like the kind of life that many of us have dreamed of touring with your band all over the place. Living out of the back of a van with your fellow band members, but as Vito described, it wasn’t all plain sailing. It was hard to get work done in a moving vehicle, but somehow he did manage to get the work done. I’m sure that you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that finding new clients can be hard. If you’ve got a fixed address and an office, but it must have been really hard if there was no office or fixed address for people to contact Vito.
Vito Peleg: [00:07:07] Initially it started just through word of mouth. So someone, I posted something on Facebook and someone said, Oh yeah, I know someone that is looking for a website. I think that the first project that I did on the road was for this seamstress, a really random website, and then I think I charged like 500 pounds for it, which I wouldn’t do nowadays. But you know, that was kind of like, that would make sense to me back then. And from there it just started spreading just well, people were seeing the stuff that I was doing with the band and which gave a lot of impact to it. you know, because we were approaching couple of thousands of people every day through our outreach online and for the band. So people went into the website and I put like a little link at the bottom of my new agency, my new agency, quote unquote. Right. Cause it was just myself. I called it the same name. So the name of the band was chased. The ACE and the name of the agency till today is ACE digital. So it kind of grew from there. Yeah. Word of mouth was the where’s the strongest thing at the beginning and that what kind of got me to the place where it was a sustainable enough to actually hire the first guy, even after the band broke up. Which is something that I really, I could have done a lot earlier, but you know, being on the road, you can’t really do that. You can’t take responsibility over another person that you’re not there. You’re not there to train them. You’re not there. So it was essential to, you know, to, to ground myself, you know, in one place, and then start scaling from there.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:36] As I said earlier, this seems like a fun and energetic lifestyle. One full of late nights and likely lots of parties. But it also seems like it could be quite a stressful lifestyle to website work to do during the day gigs to play in the evening. No reliable internet connection to allow you to do your work. The list goes on. So I asked Vito if his life at this time was stressful.
Vito Peleg: [00:09:08] Yes, actually it was a kind of a constant struggle when you’re in a band and when you’re touring the world, especially as the lead singer, there’s so much stress on you because once you lose your voice, that’s it. You have 20 shows, books head, and you know, you lose your will. Your voice was, and it’s all done. You, you can’t do it. It’s not like you can change the strings like on a guitar or something like that. So I had to really, keep myself calm and give myself. Away from, you know, in the early tools, you know, in the first few tours I was going on, algae we would, we’d get, especially in Europe, when you get to a venue, they’d give you like a crate of beer for each band member. So we made it a mission to finish each creative, beautiful, each person for every night. That was the first day, couple of tools, but then, you know, you kind of get used to the thing and, you come down a little bit. But yeah, it’s really stressful to just do well. I was managing the band, first of all, I was leading the band in terms of the business side of things, and I was the lead singer, and, and I was building websites, while doing that. But I’m always kind of proactive, you know, I’m kind of a proactive kind of guy, so that wasn’t, it just made sense to me back then. You know, I have so much. Free time because you’re just sitting in a van, what are you going to do? Just either play bubbles on your phone or do something productive. So to me, that kind of made sense to leverage that time. And I actually, while I was on the road, I met a few other musicians that we tooled with or that we kind of share the stage with that were in the same scenario, either graphic designers or LA or web designers. Just, you know, in the backstage, just before the soundcheck or between the soundcheck and the show, just wrapping up some things, sending to clients, you leveraging the wifi from the venue. It’s basically a journey between what? Between hot one hotspot to the other. That’s the, that’s a summary of the experience.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:10:56] So for reasons that we never explored, the band is no more, and that meant that Vito had to transition from that lifestyle to another one. And the obvious choice was to ramp up his website building work. So I asked him how that transition happened.
Vito Peleg: [00:11:17] So, to be honest, even though we were doing pretty well in like, you know, public standards, you know, we released two albums and we were tooling and it’s from the outside, it looked like we’re doing well. But being in a band, especially in a rock band, it’s really, really hard financially. So even before that, the money that I was doing from the, you know, building websites and doing graphic design projects and stuff like that, went. some of it went into the band rather than the band supporting this new adventure. So when, when eventually the band kind of broke up to me, it was a complete shock, you know, it was something that, and I think this is something that a lot of people in our community are going through as well. In most cases, you don’t really plan to be a web designer. You know what I mean? It’s not something that a, you kind of grow up fantasizing about. That’s what I want to do with my life, and that’s my full on passion. You discover this and you roll into it and you kind of fall in love with it over time. It’s not something that you, eh, that you put as a goal before you even tried it. So that was, so my thing was I wanted to be a musician. That’s why I came to England. That’s why. That’s what I did for 15 years, you know, so it was a, it was a huge, huge shock for me after the band broke up, especially being the leader of the band. but realizing how little power I had over the fact that it just crumbled before my eyes in the middle of a matter of two weeks. You know, it was just from the minute that the first guy said, okay, it’s not for me anymore. Until the third guy out of full was like, okay, let’s just move on. You know, we’re 30 so the first thing, I already had like a box size room in our house. That was a kind of my office for the band and for the web design business. So every morning you would get up and I would go into that office and my wife got me a little, a plaque on the, on the door that says shark tank, just to kind of like push me to that next level, which, which works, I guess. And yeah, and you, you just started. Bounding at it. Luckily, I had a lot of work already from, from the beginning, so I was pretty packed in terms of clients and ongoing stuff. I think that, some freelancers and I, I’m like myself. I’m helping a few friends that are doing this transition now. I’m just a, you know, trying to coach them and try to help them, get to that next level, this downtime that sometimes happen. This is a. It’s a huge impact on moral, first of all, you know, look, you’re on your, on your energy. If you have like a couple of months with no one coming in, you start stressing out, you’re not really sure what’s going to happen. And, in most cases, if you haven’t experienced it before, you probably haven’t saved anything for that downtime. But because I was a, you know, I, as a musician, you’re always living in a, you’re always saving. You’re always kind of a, you know, living in Los, I guess. Eh. So, so I kind of knew to do that. Previously to that, I was a guitar teacher. So when you’re a teacher, there’s, there’s these three months over the summer. Where there’s no one, you know, everyone’s on holiday. So I always knew to kind of like keep some side money aside for those downtimes, that experience in other stuff that I’ve done before that really helped. And so that’s a huge thing to do. You know, whatever you, whenever you can, or even if you can’t just taking like 10% and putting it to the side as this rainy day fund for the business, I don’t even mean. For your personal stuff, you know, or whatever comes for way in the personal lives. I mean, just for the business to make sure that you do get the income that will sustain you over those, a dine downtime. Although over those months that, you have no clients coming in. So that was really helpful for me. It was never a challenge to get clients, especially in the beginning. It became a challenge when I started scaling up, when I started having a team. And when you start, you know, so my logic at the time was, okay, now I’m doing 150% of my time is going to delivering projects and doing like client work. So let’s just get another guy and give him 30 50% of it. And so that I can build. More, you know, so in, in, he will build that 100% and then we have to, and just repeat that process again, again, get myself to 150% capacity and then pass that 50% to someone else and keep rebuilding their role. You know, that was the model for a long time, but then you get to a point where you, you gathered the team and then you get this downtime. So the impact is, is a, you know, it’s like 10 times bigger than it was before when you have. Then guys, obviously, eh, so, so you’ve got to make sure that everyone’s livelihood is a, is a, is an, is in check. And, and it’s all comes down to me, to the business owner to make sure that everyone is, can pay their rent and everyone can eat. And everyone is happy. Even if you’re not.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:15:56] Vito managed to grow his agency to 12 people. And if you’ve run or worked as an agency of any size, you’ll know that it comes with a whole variety of pressures, client expectations, balancing the books, keeping new work coming through the door. There’s obviously more than that, but I wanted to know what it was that Vito found to be the most challenging aspects of running his agency.
Vito Peleg: [00:16:23] So I would say the most stressful part of the scallop process was making sure that th that we hit the financial goals every month so that everyone could get paid. That was the biggest pain for me, you know, because I was in this mode of growth was so, it wasn’t about the profits, which now I think is, it was the wrong choice. But at the time, that was my mindset. You know, it wasn’t about profits. It’s about growing. And then eventually you will have profit, you know? But looking back, it was more of magnifying the problem. And the problem was that I didn’t have proper systems in place, which led to the fact that what I was doing at like one hour, the guys were doing it five hours, you know, took them five hours to do. So just accounting for that difference. Difference between different mindsets, different kinds of people, different, you know, energy levels. Eh? You know, even from talking to you, to you, Nathan, you, you know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve hung out a few times before. You know, I’m a, I’m a really energetic kind of person, you know, and I’m, and I’m on, but not all of your employees would be like that. And that’s something that I had to learn the hard way. I had this guy, I think it was my first guy that came in and my first guy that I hired. I was just impressed by his design. So I was like, yeah, come on, we’ll, we’ll make it work. You know, we’ll do it. But that was so stressful and not being, especially coming from a point of view of being in a band, a band is like a family. So you’re, it’s, it’s not about firing someone and bringing someone else. It’s about, you know, making the most out of this core group of your best friends that you know, you want to do something creative with. So that was my mindset as well. I tried to make it work with them. The last thing that he said before I told him, okay, it’s not going to work, was he came back when he came to the office one day and said, I need the day off tomorrow. I was like, yeah, sure. But why? I have a modeling gig. I’m going to do like going to be a model. Like what w we have work. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, but I think it’s a cool opportunity. I’m going to go do a photo shoot. You know? It
Nathan Wrigley: [00:18:24] can be hard dealing with employees and the needs that they have, but I wanted to ask Vito something about the processes that he developed over this time to make his business more efficient. Procedures that he devised, systems that he adopted. Which made some aspects of the business easier to run and maintain.
Vito Peleg: [00:18:47] I would say that, you know, delivering projects as a freelancer is different than having a team. First of all, you have a lot more freedom over when you’re going to do things and how you’re going to do them, and people accept that. But once you move to that agency model and your presenting yourself as an agency as a, let’s call it like a . Popo business, not a freelancer that is doing this a here and there. That’s when people expect you to treat them like that. So, so this means that while we got bigger projects, the timelines and the deadlines became a lot more strict. And so we had to confine to them. We had loads of problem with, with scope grips, because I wasn’t systemizing this properly. I had no problem saying no, but, but when I wasn’t there, you know, and when the, when the client was communicating with one of my guys. Then things just kept getting back and back, you know, back and forth, endless back and forth and adding features and doing revisions. And I had the biggest thing, and that was a huge, a huge lesson for me. I priced the project that I thought it was a pretty decent project, and I priced it for 15,000 pounds. It ended up after that, calculated that because I was checking time with everyone, which is really important. you know, having like a little software that tracks hours and tracks minutes, you know, per task and everything. So when I looked back and, and, and, you know, and I was kind of loose about it because I thought, okay, I did 15,000 pounds out of this. What can I do to, to lose money from this project? But apparently when I was looking back. The project costs should have cost 45,000 and all of this extra cash or the extra 30 K came out of my own pocket without even noticing just through last time and two additional requests that weren’t accounted for as the project began. Yeah. That was a huge, huge, you know, this realization was really sobering. And you, you know, when you get this lump in your stomach, when you, when you see a number and you get that thing, so when I saw that 45, it was 47, I think, 47 something. When I saw that, that’s the total, you know, after doing the report, I just felt this thing in my stomach and it, it took a long time to get it to. Get it to go away. Everyone was working that that wasn’t the problem. And that’s what’s kind of got me to think that, okay, everything is going on track. Cause I see the guys, you know, head on into the, into the screen. But I wasn’t aware that, that the client was talking directly to the designer and just adding features and adding features and doing requests changing and going back and back to the same and legislation form like 10 times again and again. And. Just changing into just a Papa scope creep. You know, we know this, this term. I had to learn this term from that client after where, you know, after, before, before that I didn’t even realize what it means. but after that, I became really conscious of this thing. You know, I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t happen. Still. There are, there are still clients that come back and projects do become unprofitable in some cases, but. I do know to put the stop when the client goes overboard and I just go in and I speak to the plant myself and explain to them that makes no sense to keep doing stuff. And then a website is ever evolving and you can’t just keep changing things. And in a sentence that I really like is that speed to market trumps perfection. And I think that this is something that I’m trying to teach all my clients and trying to live by myself with all the projects that I’m doing. It’s more about just getting it out there because you never know if it’s going to, if not, something’s going to work or not. Anyway, you just got to put it in front of people and see how they react and then refine it. So once you have a team, it’s important to do the meetings. I don’t really like doing meetings, but, but I try to form, I force myself to do that. And if I miss the weekly one, I tried to do one with each, or just work. Go between the guys. My team is, is a, is spread around the world and in the office here. So I do like Skype calls and I do these kinds of things. It’s really important to have a communication system. Communications is everything. That’s the gist of it. You know, if you can communicate properly with your team and with your clients, you have a good business. So, so structuring that and the, you know, jumping between different platforms and triangle kinds of different solutions. Until I found . What works best for our use case. Took a long time, you know, but we tried everything from spreadsheets to, two phone calls to two different, their project management systems, support desks, different chats a week. We used to use Skype even to chat with the entire team at the beginning, before we move to something form of the Slack. And then we moved to teamwork. So just figuring out which. Process, is the right one for you. But I would say it’s more about this mindset of being conscious of the fact that you need processes, that it is important to list down what you’re doing so that you can pass this on to someone else properly.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:23:37] One of the things that WP and UP is trying to do is to assist people with their businesses should they feel that they have a need. Perhaps you have run into something new that you don’t know how to solve. Perhaps you’re just looking to improve a process that you already have. It’s entirely possible to come up with solutions all by yourself, but wouldn’t it be nice to have some support from people who’ve already experienced that same issue? Someone who can support you through it. I wondered if Vito had a trusted source for such business issues, a course, a person, a mentor.
Vito Peleg: [00:24:17] So that was kind of crazy. And I think that this is something that we all go through ourselves in this opportunity. What you’re talking about is going to be incredible for people. Let, I wish I had that a few years ago, when I had to, when I realized that I went on Google and I tried to find. If there is like a bundle of processes for digital agency, it makes so much sense to have something like that. And I would just buy it and have it, you know? But there was nothing like that. And so I resorted to what most people do, which is going to courses. So I took all kinds of courses. I did like the WP innovation one, and I’ve been doing courses since then, like loads of loads of different ones, a digital marketer, the lean, the ones. Now the LinkedIn things and the, you know, consulting.com so, I’m always educating myself so that I can build the right processes. I don’t count on anyone else to give them to me by this point. Even the stuff that I do find online. I feel that I can make them a little better, even that makes sense. Or at least more fitting to my needs. There is a learning curve that has to happen when you build a new process and well, if I can tap into the knowledge for that, someone else’s others have burnt doing, doing what we’re trying to do already, you know? So why not learn from their experience and try to. Find something that already works. I always love that solution that’s really inspired by the WordPress ecosystem. That’s how we do things. You know? Just find something that works and make it your own.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:25:45] Earlier Vito mentioned that he has a distributed team, some people in the office with him, but there are a few of them dotted around the globe. I was curious to know how this was all managed. How do they manage to keep in touch and stay on the same page with all the tasks that they have going on.
Vito Peleg: [00:26:05] So, about the, the remote team, the distributed team, I started a, I hired actually my first developer while I was still on the road, cause that, that didn’t require me to be, you know, in one position it was a girl from, from India. Oh, actually, no, that’s not true. There was one guy before that who worked with me for a few months and then completely disappeared, you know, yet I have no idea where he went. We were in middle middle of a project and that was really, really stressful because I didn’t know how to, you know, I, I’m more on the design side, so I’m all like HTML, CSS wanting stuff and not so much on the PHP bit. So I rely on my team to, to deliver a PHP related tasks. And this guy. Just disappeared one day, you know? But, so he just disappeared one day and I, that was really stressful, especially what on the road I try doing like a Upwork and I tried going all kinds of different routes. Eventually what I found was the most beneficial was to find a company that manages a bunch of people abroad and hire a dedicated resource from them. So you get one guy that is completely, it does only your stuff, but he has a place, he has an office, he has an employer that can shout on aim when needed. And that was a transformative thing for the business to find out that these companies exist and to find someone, you know, within these companies that can help me grow even more. And it makes it easier as well. Cause you know, if I need a new developer. I just go to a few of these guys and I tell them, eh, okay, this is the job description. You go and you hire someone, send me the, send me the CVS. And you know, they do the work for me and I hire the guide through them. Every day of being a business owner is stressful. Eh, that’s part of the game as I see it. You know, cause you, you do have that responsibility on your shoulders. And I embrace it. You know, I’m not afraid of taking responsibility. And I think that this is a, this is something that I had to build within myself through these courses, through reading books about this, through listening to podcasts and listening to and reading articles and just, you know, bettering myself and, and I’m priming my mind. To be able to cope with these situations. I would say that in terms of if I can, if I can say that everything is going well and, and I’m stress-free months ahead. No, not at all. I, I had an experience with niching down last year, so this is something that was, you know, everyone’s talking about niching down, right? That’s the. That’s a hot topic. So I took the advice and I finished down. So I did. I went through the process of finding which niche I’m going to go after. Basically, I went through a process where I looked at my existing clients and I figured which ones I want more of, and that’s how I niche down. So I F I wanted to work with more charities. I haven’t. I have you clap at charity clients that I really enjoy working with and I, I liked the fact because we’re also doing a bit of marketing services. I like the fact that that the money that we’re generating was going to a good cause rather than to someone’s a pocket, if that makes sense. But it was really, really hard. Eh, you jump into an area where there are other people that have been there for. You know, more than a decade already. you’ve got, you’ve got to stand out too, to just to assert yourself. And also, you know, when I was considering this niche, I was looking only at the upside. You know, I was looking at, okay, I have this client and I love working with him. I have that client. I love working with her. And, they have nice websites. They’re always happy, they come back for most stuff, eh, you know, we, we keep building more and more things for them, so that’s perfect. I just need a few more of these and I’m golden. I forgot that at the beginning, acquiring these clients was a nightmare because when you’re in a charity, you have the bold and the bold doesn’t care about anything. All they care is about the bottom line. They don’t see investment longterm, most in most cases, especially when you working in the digital digital field. The average age for a, for a board member in the UK is 76. So imagine teaching 76 year olds, a group of 76 year olds, that it’s important to have a proper website, and it’s important to invest into digital strategies and these kinds of stuff instead of sending snail mail and, and the creating a yearly functions. So, so, so that was a huge, huge challenge. It did work, but it was, like eventually I cracked it, but it was so stressful and we got into a bit of debt, which was the first time in my life that I, that I got into debt. Yeah. I crawled out of there. I didn’t, it wasn’t like, like shooting out of the, of this pit, you know, it was clamping through everything you can to just try and get yourself out of this situation.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:47] Being a freelancer, it’s easy for me to keep track of what it is that I need to generate each month in order to be profitable. My income is this and my outgoings are this, and from there I know what’s what, but when you have a team, suddenly it’s more complex. It’s not just you. If you’re in the red, then that impacts your team members. So I wondered how Vito manages his finances in relation to his team.
Vito Peleg: [00:31:20] Well, the, the of the top goes to me if there is any, but if with a, yeah, in most cases it was, especially in those, in this period, in those times, it was just the race to that number. So I had the number written on my, my notebook. Every morning you go in and I look at the number that I need to reach and I just hypothesize of ideas of what they can do to reach that, what projects I can expedite, what, what let clients I can upsell. What, what, marketing strategies I can, or techniques I can implement this week that will get me a few, calls next week and so on. I think that one of the most transformative things was creating a machine that will drive leads in. That was, you know, once that happened. Things became a lot brighter. And I think that, you know, even speaking with some of the guys at the WordCamp, when we were, we met, a few people came to me and asked me about this, about this. I like to call the machines. You know, because a machine is predictable. You flick on the light in your room and you know the light will go on, even though it needs to go all the way back to the power plant and back to you just to make it happen. Bosses in this, the system is so optimized that it’s seamless. You don’t even think about the fact you just flick on the light and it’s on. And that’s what I believe that a marketing machine should look like. And it takes time to get it to this point. Like it took time for Edison to get the light bulb to work. But once you do, it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing for the business to have a marketing machine that drives leads every day. So everything, you know, I said before that everything is about communications, and that’s true. But having the right communication and knowing how to communicate properly is a mindset thing. So if you want to run a business, and if you want to grow the business, you can’t be yourself ahead. That you’ll have to change. You know, you have to evolve. To become someone else, someone that can face those new challenges and can face those new stress levels to, to accommodate the growth that you want to achieve. And that’s what I mean by like mindset forming habits. So it means trying to figure out the things that you’re doing during the day that will help you. A structure or reprogram your mind in a way that will allow you to reach your goals. That’s just a, might seem a bit spiritual to some, you know, I think people look at these things as a kind of the, law of attraction and these kinds of, you know what I mean? But it’s true. You know, it might, it might, I think it was just like fluffed up by, over time. But the core of it is true. You, you have to envision that, that perspective of what you want to achieve. So for example, mindset forming habit is having the notebook Hill where I list down everything that I do more than once. If I do it twice, I write it down and I tried to systemize an automated or pass it on to someone. So you just have to, Well, I’m your mind to become who you wanted to become. And I think the coolest thing to look at this, and that’s like the best analogy that I like to imagine it in is like, you remember this game? It seems the seams, I think it was called, eh, so, so, you know, you’re in control of this avatar that is moving around this, this world, you know, they serve virtual world. And like any other video game, you just tell it what to do and it does it. If it doesn’t do it. You force it to do it. And, that’s how I try to see things. So if I’m, if I, I don’t want to wake up and do my morning workout, or if I don’t want to call the client because, Oh, I can’t be bothered talking to this guy again, I just tried to get out of my mind and, and see myself as that seam, a character sitting in the office. And I just tell myself, you do it. You know, it just, you got to pull the strings from above. The body is just a body. That’s what, it’s what the mind tells it. In the same way, like the player tells the, the avatar in the, in a video game.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:35:12] Vito, as I’m sure you’ll have heard, is a very positive person. He’s full of energy and he wants to succeed in all that he does. But I wanted to know if this was something that he’s able to maintain. Many of us didn’t think like he does, and so I asked him if he’s always on approach was something that he’s not always able to maintain. Perhaps sometimes this positive energy slips away,
Vito Peleg: [00:35:40] eh, yes, it does happen sometimes. I think that. This is kind of a weaving. I’ve even wrote this on the notes here of, staying strong. And I like to call it killing the monkey on the shoulder. Cause that’s the, that’s this kind of mindset that you got to avoid. You know, you can’t let yourself get into these games. You can’t let yourself go into these eh, destructive and poisonous thoughts, eh, that things are not going to go your way and it’s just not going to happen. And we all, you know, we all have this. Things, and it’s still there every, every single day. But I just catch it and I throw it, you know, and I catch this thought and I just release it. And you got to flip yourself when, when this happens or if it’s not for you, you need to stop, you know? If it’s not, if it’s not something that you see yourself doing, don’t do it. You know? That’s the, that’s the, I think the best advice that, that I can give. You know, if it’s not for you, when you feel that you’re overwhelmed by all of this. Just go get a job, it’s fine. You know? It’s not that bad. And actually, do you know if you’re struggling to make ends meet by being a freelancer or struggling to build your own business and you can’t find the strength to gather the knowledge because the knowledge is out there, you know. It’s, we’re not the first people that are growing businesses. We’re not the first people that are moved doing this transition from freelance to agency to scalable product to whatever. You know, everyone, everything’s been done before. So you just need to tap into this knowledge. And if you’re not strong enough or you don’t feel that it’s interesting or you’re not passionate enough about going to this thing, why, why would you do this to yourself and be a freelancer with, you know, not one boss. Cause you know, when you, when you’re a freelancer, you don’t have one boss. You have all of your kinds that, all your bosses. So you just duplicated the problem that you thought you were solving. But yeah. So that’s kind of the way that I tackle this. I just tried to kill that monkey every day, every day, and a few times a day. Well, it’s a, it’s easier said than done, that’s for sure. I can say that I have a few techniques that I’m using to, to fix that. So when I’m feeling down, I have a 25 minute recording of myself. Telling me how awesome I am, and I have it on my iPhone. So I listened to this too. And if I wake up, and I’m not really in the mood, I listen to this on the way, the office, I wrote it down first. You know, it’s, it’s also a summer. It’s a known tool for, for mindset optimization, like positive affirmations. And so, but if you’re listening well, and you can listen to the stuff on Spotify or even, on YouTube, there’s loads of these positive affirmations that it’s great. You know. It’s really empowering to listen to, but once you do it for yourself, it’s like 10 times you 10 X the impact because you’re telling yourself that you’re the best marketer in the world and you’re telling yourself that you, you are golden genius. You know, and you can say whatever you want because that’s, that’s not who you are today. That’s who you’re transforming. And I think that, like when I recorded it, I wrote down that I need to work out every day. The affirmation I have it, I have it here. I haven’t seen in the office, but, but basically I’m saying something like, I enjoy working out every day. I wake up every morning just waiting to go into the gym and start lifting weights. And it’s so far from the truth. It’s unbelievable. And you know, listening in the recording, I can hear myself trying to say it. You know, like a, I couldn’t believe myself in the recording when I was saying it, but, but after a few months, it was like. Okay. I guess I need to go to the gym this morning.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:39:27] one of the purposes of the PressForward podcast is to lift the lid on topics that don’t get talked about often enough to allow people to share their stories so that others might listen. And by listening, they may gain an understanding that they’re not alone. There are other people out there who have faced the same situations that you are facing. They have found a way through and can offer support to you on your journey. Maybe that person’s already in your life, but they might not be. And that’s what WP and UP is here for, to connect you with the support that you need. So if you’re able to please help us. So that we can continue to support the WordPress community. You can
[email protected] forward slash. Donate.
The PressForward podcast is brought to you today by green geeks. Green geeks offers a specially engineered platform that gives WordPress users web hosting that is designed to be the fastest, most secure and scalable hosting available in multiple data centers. Their WordPress hosting makes deploying and managing WordPress websites easy with automatic one click install managed updates, real time security protection, SSD raid 10 storage arrays, power cacher and expert help 24 seven. To make for the best web hosting experience, and we thank green geeks for their support of the PressForward podcast.
Okay. That’s it for this week. Please let us know if you’re enjoying the podcast. If you’re finding it useful or helpful, you can reach out to
[email protected] forward. Slash contact. There’s a serious point to all of this though. And that is that WP and AARP is here to provide help and support that help is available to you or people that you know and can be easily
[email protected] website. Please spread the word about this podcast. Tell your friends and subscribe on your favorite podcast player and remember that together we can hashtag. PressForward.
Big Orange Heart