September 15, 2019 — In the WordPress Community, we talk about community frequently. We know how to build community with WordPress, but what about with our own clients?

Retaining clients and parting ways with clients requires grace. This type of relationship maintenance is an important thing to learn for introverts and applies to new businesses to veterans. It’s an art and a science — soft skills for the win!

In this talk, I’ll discuss how I went from an employee to a business owner — with half of the clients I need in the first four months — because of soft skills. We’ll talk about relationship building tips for organic and sustainable growth — online and off.

September 12, 2019

January 6, 2019 — In the WordPress Community, we talk about community frequently. We know how to build community with WordPress, but what about with our own clients? Retaining clients and parting ways with clients requires grace. This type of relationship maintenance is an important thing to learn for introverts and applies to new businesses to veterans. It’s an art and a science — soft skills for the win! In this talk, I’ll discuss how I went from an employee to a business owner — with half of the clients I need in the first four months — because of soft skills. We’ll talk about relationship building tips for organic and sustainable growth — online and off.

December 14, 2018 — In the WordPress Community, we talk about value — quite a lot. And that’s awesome. We should charge for our value. The problem comes when we don’t understand our cost — both in financial, physical, and branding terms.

Having spent over ten years in construction accounting, “job costing” is in my vocabulary and the front of my mind. But as a marketer, I also understand that WordPress has a branding problem. In order to elevate our personal brands and the brand of WordPress, it’s important that we go beyond value and take a look at cost.

In this talk, I’ll discuss job costing, sample time tracking, and just how to reverse engineer your pricing to not only meet your expenses, but live the life you want.

December 12, 2018 — Once you have a great website for your business, or a client’s business, time to get it out there. No longer is the Internet a Field of Dreams where people just show up. Using Social Media can help grow your brand awareness and show customers how engaged with them you are.

June 10, 2018 — WordPress is awesome. Open Source is great. But what does that mean? It means that this free and open source software is maintained and written by a volunteer labor base. When you contribute to WordPress, that’s you.

With now 30% of the market share, WordPress is scaling fast — as a software and as a community.

In this talk, Bridget Willard will give actionable tips to help us be mindful of our entire health: physical, emotional, and financial.

February 25, 2018 — A frank and honest discussion with women who have been involved for different amounts of time in WordPress – ranging from development to designer to marketer.

December 1, 2017 — In the WordPress Community, we’ve heard the word Community thrown around quite a bit. But what does it really mean? How do you build a community? Who is relevant? How do you spend your time in a way that brings a return? What is a return?
Communicating with people in person and online and building relationships is the key to personal brand awareness and more. At this talk, I’ll reveal all of my relationship building tips and tricks both in person and on Twitter. See you there!

April 15, 2017 — The WordPress industry is dominated by freelancers, remote workers and a distributed workforce. Though the Community as a whole is strong, the day to day reality for many is isolation.

Sure, there’s Twitter, Slack, and the lot. But seeing people’s faces and hearing their voices is the way humans connect. This is why Face to Face Communication is such an important part of human connection. And you can’t have a community without connection.

It’s easy to take meetups for granted or to believe that their only value is in the exchange of information. However, the value of in-person meetups cannot be understated. Meetups are a great defence against isolation. They inspire, create relationships, and are a great place to learn. Yet, not everyone lives close enough to attend a WordPress meetup.

In Orange County, for example, we have several meetups to choose from which have become mini communities in and of themselves. By building relationships, there is a cohesive bond is formed. We generally call this friendship.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” CS Lewis

Knowing that you’re not alone is the first step in friendship. The exchange of ideas — theme suggestions, the best form plugins, and CSS tricks — all help the meetup attendee with her work, but even more, the discussion is a platform upon which friendships are built. And friendships are the undergirding, supportive structure of any thriving community — like a coral reef.

April 3, 2017 — Bridgett Willard is the Marketing Manager at WordImpress. She started her career with office work, earned a teaching degree, but returned to the office where she carved out a career in social media and marketing.

She is the co-host of WPblab and co-organizer of Women Who WP meetup.

She is a member of the Marketing Team and we talk about the Four Horseman of WordPress Marketing.