Steve’s Blog

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this bonus episode, I turn the tables and talk with my co-host Vic Drover. Vic explains the last 18 months at Watchful: buying out partners, building a new team, rebranding, acquisitions, and pushing ahead in both Joomla and WordPress. People in this episode

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this episode, we talk with Brian Sooy, who has run AESPIRE, his Ohio agency, for 25 years. He builds all his marketing on the StoryBrand framework, and we talk about storytelling and making your customer the hero of your company’s story. People in this episode

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this episode, we talk with Kimberly Lipari, CEO of Valet and a lead organizer of WordCamp US, which is going virtual for the first time. We talk about moving a huge event online, the value of being vulnerable with your team and clients, and how Valet has grown and shrunk over the years. People in this episode

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this episode, we talk with Teresa Smith and Jennifer Marriott, who run Red Sage Communications, a female-owned agency in Alabama that pays well and has kept growing through the pandemic. They credit deep local roots, modern tools, and careful time-tracking across 200+ client sites. People in this episode

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this episode, we talk with Andrew Palmer, who calls himself an ‘accidental entrepreneur’. He manages over 300 sites at his UK agency and also has interests in restaurants, SaaS products, marketplaces and a development company in India. He has strong opinions and plenty of creative ideas. People in this episode

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this episode, we talk with Nathan Ingram, who has built client websites for 25 years and now coaches WordPress agency owners through his work and MonsterContracts.com. This is a high-energy episode packed with practical advice for growing an agency. People in this episode

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this episode, we talk with Mike Demo, who built his career on relationships, first selling big agency projects and now looking for investments at Web Ventures, part of InMotion Hosting. We discuss moving your agency upmarket, closing large deals, and making your business more valuable to buyers. People in this episode

The Hot Air Podcast was a series I recorded with my friend Vic Drover for Watchful.net. In this episode, we talk with Brian Mitchell, the new President of Open Source Matters, the organization behind Joomla. He also runs InterGen near Milwaukee, which began as a non-profit helping volunteer groups and now focuses on premium hosting. People in this episode