February 25, 2020 — Through all these excuses and some legitimate reasons, as business owners we must continue to provide the impeccable white glove service our clients have come to expect from us. In this talk, Charles will go over ways of handling different clients with and scenarios with the same level of compassion and service his and hopefully your company has become known for. Key areas such as listening, responding with empathy, learning how to avoid the drama queens and what to do when you find yourself in business with them.

June 2, 2019 — Whether you’ve been blogging for a decade, or you’re just starting out… creating great content for brands is one of the best ways to make money. Throughout this session, you’ll discover ways to use your own skill-sets to bring value to brands, regardless of what your own personal following might be! You are able to provide value whether your content lives on your own platforms, the brand’s platforms, or both; and it’s your job to get creative with how you package your value. My goal is to answer the following questions…

What services should I offer?
Chances are that your blogging experience has turned you into a one-stop-shop media company! And there are many ways that you can bundle those skills into services that companies are willing to pay for. We will discuss a variety of specific and marketable services as well as ways to figure out which services will be the best fit for you personally.

How can I market those services?
Once you have a clear idea of what you’d like to provide to brands, you need to convince them that you are the best person for the job! The good news? There are endless ways to market your services, and we will dive into various strategies that you can start implementing right away. The bad news? They all take time, effort, and consistency. There are clear paths to success, but there aren’t any shortcuts.

Who should I reach out to?
This part of the process is so crucial! After putting in so much time and effort into the services and the marketing strategy, we are just ready to throw it out into the world and see what happens. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a massive following already, this method won’t get you very far. Instead, we want to be strategic about finding new direct contacts that are a great fit for what we are offering. Again, this is time-consuming (and oftentimes brain-numbing), but it works!

The beauty of this process is that any blogger can follow it and find a new source of income. Once we start thinking of ourselves as mini media companies, a whole new world opens up!

July 12, 2017 — In his talk we expect to gather all the golden nuggets of what goes into the business of both product and service driven company and what is ‘right’ thing to do.

August 2, 2016 — SMS service demo.

August 2, 2016 — This one’s for everybody! In this talk, we’ll cover the organizational and technical benefits of running a multi-network, multi-site WordPress as the primary CMS at Boston University. We’ll highlight specific strategies, including organizational policies, development workflows, and team structure that allow us to serve over a million users per month. We’re here to help dispel the notion that a centralized approach to WordPress can’t successfully be implemented in Higher Ed.

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February 11, 2016 — Solutions that solve real world problems start with an idea; but not just any idea, a good one. How you build and iterate upon that idea is what ultimately determines its success or failure. WordPress is an excellent platform for entrepreneurs. It powers close to 25% of the Internet, is flexible, and has a bright future. Thus, it serves as an excellent springboard to launch new, exciting, and profitable solutions. Whether it be in themes, plugins, or services, there’s plenty of room for innovation and disruption. Learn how you can take advantage of WordPress’s popularity and flexibility to enter the market faster, with less investment, and more opportunity. The session examines our unique industry and how you can build a successful business creating solutions for WordPress. We will review real world success stories, how to take advantage of your strengths and weaknesses, and the basics of launching a successful product or service in the WordPress space.

Presentation Slides »

November 18, 2015 — Ako vytvoriť pomocou WordPress úspečný produkt, službu.

July 27, 2015 — In this talk we explore what goes into a TandM contract, how to persuade a prospective client to sign one, and how to live up to the expectations you create in the persuasion process, to deliver a successful project.

February 24, 2015 — John Hawkins interviewed by Chris Lema