Carrie Dils

Carrie Dils was building communities before it was cool. And was actually doing the building! In today's bit, Carrie tells us about how she built her podcast community and the pros and cons of doing your own dev work. Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/005 Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribe This clip is brought to you by WP Wallet

LinkedIn Learning is a force in the online course space, with hundreds of courses, millions of learners, and a well-oiled machine for putting out great content. I, along with today’s guest, Carrie Dils, are fortunate to be long-time instructors for the platform. I invited Carrie on to catch up, and I thought it would be fun for us to exchange notes on how we come up with ideas for, and then record, our LinkedIn Learning courses. In Build Something More, it gets even more fun as we talk about the courses we thought would do SUPER well but turned out to…well…not. Top Takeaways: Carrie and I both followed in the footsteps of people we learned from; if you have an appreciation for learning, teaching is a great next step!Carrie likes to pitch ideas for courses on topics she wants to know more about. In order to teach something well, you need to know it well!We both shared our love of recording in LinkedIn Learning’s campus booths. Having a stellar process, and the right environment for instructors is a big win. If you’re creating courses, the advice we share in this episode can help you figure out what works best for you. Show Notes: Carrie DilsCarrie on LinkedinCarrie on TwitterMorten Rand_Hendrikson on TwitterJoin the Creator CrewSponsored by: TextExpander | LearnDash

It’s the WP Minute! This is Carrie Dils and I’m filling in for Matt, who’s tweeting about podcasting. This episode is brought to you by Easy Support Videos. Support your WordPress users by embedding videos and screencasts right inside the WordPress admin. Learn more at EasySupportVideos.com!  You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links. Let’s get to the News Stay tuned for the direction of block development in the next few months. Justin Tadlock over on the WPTavern wrote about whether block development is merely a templating system with no build process. Since there still is a big concern around the direction of block development, he went ahead and reviewed where the React-based WordPress block editor (sometimes referred to as Gutenberg) had been hitting speed bumps for WordPress developers who have been more PHP Centric. Helen Hou-Sandi also published on her blog how she spent the last 8 months telling anybody she talked to about custom WordPress block development. They were way less scary and much easier than she thought they were going to be for somebody with minimal React experience. She said that a big game-changer for adoption and shifting thinking would be to find a way to unify templating between the front-end and the editor, essentially swapping the places where you output content with the corresponding editor component.  My personal opinion: “That sounds amazing”! Helen says: “these are experiments and there will likely be many failed paths”, and that the focus remains on the problem to be solved during the research and experimentation phase, not on the implementation details. If you want the scoop on React and the possible direction of block development make sure you check out her post and follow updates on Twitter. For you plugin developers seeing plugin changes on WordPress.org: Mika Epstein reported on WordPress.org that inaccurate stats were adjusted for 100 plugins recently because of a stats gathering change. This means those plugins had their active install stats seemingly adjusted downward. She wants you to understand this was painful for a number of developers and they held off on announcing this as they were still doing a bit of triage and making sure it was blocked. Sorry about that confusion and it is corrected now. Let’s Talk about WooCommerce If you follow Bob Dunn for WooCommerce news, he announced that his Twitter handle changed for all things Woo. Jump over to @DotheWoo for updates and news. Moving on to the Grabbag If you are a runner, walker, or crawler this one is for you. WordPress has a virtual 5k scheduled for October 1 through October 30. This race is virtual and “virtually” anyone can participate in the race with the possibility of completing the 5k race. You can track your route on your favorite app or record the 5k off the grid. And you can register for the WordPress 5k or just donate if you cannot participate. We are looking forward to seeing your progress and success. Just tag #wwwp5k. And…Congrats go out to Jonathan Wold for joining Cory Miller over at Post Status. Keep your eyes peeled for good things coming from them. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list at thewpminute.com. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list

Introducing Carrie Dils Carrie is a web developer instructor and freelance coach. She teaches front end web development and WordPress courses over at LinkedIn Learning. Show Notes Twitter | @cdils Website | Carrie Dils Website | The Fearless Freelancer Episode Transcript Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress. Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives. Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 100. Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys. Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Carrie Dils. Carrie is a web developer instructor and freelance coach. And she is one of our very first supporters of our podcast. When Tara and I were starting to consider and getting ready to launch this podcast, we reached out to Carrie, who is a very accomplished podcaster in her own right to ask for advice and for guidance. She shared a lot of logistics, and there’s a lot of emotional support as well. Then when we first started to ask for financial support of our podcast, she was the first and dare I say only individual to contribute to the costs associated with running this podcast. Just one more bit of introduction for Carrie, before I welcome her properly to the show, is to show that when we have guests on to the show, we asked them to complete a form with just some logistics information so we can describe them and read an introduction about them. And one of the questions that we asked our to-be guests is, who in the WordPress community do they respect but have yet to meet? And I can say that Carrie Dils name comes up more often than any others as someone in the WordPress community who people respect, but they’ve yet to meet. So as we celebrate our 100th episode, it is with great joy and happiness that we welcome Carrie to the show. Welcome, Carrie. Carrie: Thank you so much. What an intro. Tara: Carrie, we’re so excited. Thank you very much for joining us on Hallway Chats. For those who don’t know you and for those who do, can you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do? Carrie: Sure. [sound cut off]  Over the past few years have gone more into education. I teach front end web development and WordPress courses over at LinkedIn Learning. Also, as you guys said, I have a podcast and then run a series of courses called The Fearless Freelancer, just teaching basic business skills to those getting started in their web development businesses. Liam: Carrie, I’ve looked up to you for years now as a friendly business leader, and certainly my headphones have carried your voice many times as I’ve cut my grass trying to figure out how to make my little practice better. How did you fall into all of this? Because web technology is relatively new, podcasting is new. Figuring out how to be a successful business owner in an environment that’s always changing, how did that come to be? Can you talk us through that story a little bit? Carrie: Sure. I probably embarked into it a little bit about 20 years ago. Oh, my gosh, I’ve been out of college like 25 years. Oh my gosh. I don’t know. After I graduated college, I didn’t really have too many marketable skills, other than I learned just basic HTML to make websites. So I found out that I really enjoyed that and just kind of fell into freelancing. At that point in time, you would actually look in the classifieds for web work. And did that. Then maybe six, seven years ago at this point, somebody told me about WordPress. I’d gotten out of the web development industry and was thinking about making a career change and somebody told me about WordPress. I guess the rest is kind of history. But in terms of the business side of it, entrepreneurial spirit has always been with me. Liam: As you discovered WordPress, and were thinking, “Okay, maybe I don’t want to leave development yet,” where did WordPress go with your career or where did you take it? What about it? Where did you latch on to? Did you continue to be basically a WordPress consultant offering development and the like? Or how did that come about or proceed? What happened? Carrie: When I first got started with WordPress you mean? Yeah. I was looking to make a career change. At that point, I had been with the Starbucks Corporation for about a decade and I was tired of the coffee business and frankly, tired of being in the service industry and looking for a change. So I fell back on what was that old skill in web development. I obviously needed a lot of dusting off. It was somebody that I worked with at Starbucks that actually told me about WordPress. So I started working with it, playing with it. I honestly don’t even remember how I found my first WordPress client. It might have been a referral or friend of a friend. I’ve slept too many times to remember. Just kind of slowly started dipping my way back into offering client services while I was still working at Starbucks. And then there came a tipping point where it was much more financially attractive to let go of the Starbucks work and go freelance full time. Tara: Your transition then from that, from doing client work, how long did you do client work before you started teaching, I guess? Carrie: A couple of years. Maybe two, three years. And the teaching, I kind of backed into that too. It was as I was learning WordPress, I would blog about my experience and blog in the form of tutorials, mostly to help me remember what it was I was learning. But I got a lot of good feedback on those that people were finding them helpful. So that led me to start being more purposeful about writing tutorials and things that would be helpful for other people. Tara: So you taught yourself and then your documentation of that was blogging, which then turned into another business outlet for you? Carrie: It did. Tara: Did you find that you liked that more than doing client work? Because it seems like your business really transitioned more and then into teaching freelancers how to be freelancers. You’re a teacher at heart, would you say? Carrie: You know, I would have never thought of myself that way, but I have found that work to be very gratifying. I guess maybe so. I’ve never thought of myself as a teacher or ever necessarily wanting a career in education. But it’s really fun to watch somebody want to learn how to do something and get to have a hand and teaching them and then see them go be successful in whatever, whether that’s creating a website or filing their official papers for their business, or whatever it is. It’s cool to be part of that journey. Tara: Yeah, I can definitely see that. And I think your personality is comfortable and fun so you make it interesting for people to want to interact with you on that level. When it comes to your running a business, how have you found that transition from client work to being a teacher? Because teachers don’t get paid as much as business people, right? Or that is not true in the LinkedIn and WordPress world? Carrie: Well, I mean, certainly, it’s not part of traditional education which certainly our teachers are grossly underpaid. But thankfully, I don’t rely on government budgets to set my salary restrictions. That was a little bit of a juggling act to make the leap. It wasn’t really even a leap, it was just kind of a slow overlap of doing the educational stuff and doing client services along with it until I had enough income coming into let the client services go. A lot of hustle. Liam: Yeah, Yeah. And you told me, Carrie, but I would imagine it was LinkedIn says, “Hey, would you like to put together a course?” And you say, “Okay, sure.” And then you realize or learn about the difference between a well-documented blog post in a formal LinkedIn Learning course and the level of preparation and energy and hours, frankly, that you would have to put into that. What was that all like? Carrie: Oh, yeah. That’s been an education on its own just learning how to do courses at a professional level. Thankfully, I write all the courses, I plan all the courses, and then I show up and record them. But they do the heavy lifting in terms of the production and whatnot. But yeah, from a planning perspective, it’s a pretty significant upfront time investment that goes into creating the materials. Of course, I’m working with some of their staff to make sure that what I’m thinking of actually sound like it makes sense. So there’s some collaboration there. Kind of learning that model, it’s not like it’s any big secret or difficulty. Every course just starts off with first, what’s the learning objective, what do you want to teach somebody, and then creating an outline. Okay, here’s the big five bases we want to cover. And then within each of those bases, maybe there’s five or six subtopics. So just coming up with that initial outline for a course has helped me think through how I wrote my Fearless Freelance or courses, how I structure blog post now. It’s even helped me in just if I’m preparing to talk at a WordCamp or something. Again, it’s not like it’s any big magic, but it was just something I had not been exposed to. I’ve gotten in education in the process. Tara: How do you balance imposter syndrome with this? Obviously, there’s a lot of talk in our space about imposter syndrome, and I think teaching sometimes helps you learn something more. I found giving talks is helpful because I feel like I learn things and I realize that I know more than I think I do. Is that hold true? Do you think that this process has helped you if you ever did have imposter syndrome to I guess work on that? Maybe not get over it, but work on it? Carrie: Yeah, I did and I do still have imposter syndrome based on the scenario. But I think the teaching and repeated showing up in those capacities has helped build my confidence. And of course, when people will give you feedback, it’s not always positive. Or I should say it’s constructive but not always necessarily in a praise way. But when you hear enough people responding positively, it helps you say, “Okay, I guess I do know what I’m talking about or I guess I have been helpful. So I’m going to try to put my imposter syndrome on the shelf a little bit.” Liam: Yeah, that’s a thing that never goes away. Carrie, you mentioned talking at a WordCamp, and I want to ask you about how you first encountered the WordPress community and maybe even your first WordCamp – how that came about and what you made of it all back then? Carrie: This was I think maybe 2013. I’d never heard of a WordCamp. I had started working with WordPress, and of course, just googling, finding tutorials and stuff like that and I came across Billy Erickson’s website, who’s a very talented developer that I look up to. He’s based out of Texas, which is where I was based out of. Somehow I was poking around on his website, looking at something and I saw a reference to a WordCamp. I was like, “What?” Trace it back, I find the link to the WordCamp site, and I realized that I’ve just missed – maybe this is 2012, I can’t remember – but I realized that I’ve just missed whatever Texas camp had happened. It was probably working in Boston. So I just waited until the next year till it rolled around again and I went. And I think I was just jaw-dropping the floor that all these people were interested in this software, and we’re coming together and giving away information at such a ridiculously low cost. Of course, it was fun. I remember that was the first time I met Chris Lema in person, the first time I met Megan Gray in person, Bill Erickson, and Jared Atchison. All these people that I had interacted with online, and respected. And it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, like, I’m standing in the same room with you.” Of course, that just started a trend of attending as many WordCamps as I could manage to get to. Tara: They are pretty life-changing. We’ve talked to so many people who had that experience, myself included, and I think we give a lot of credit to WordCamp for changing people’s interaction with WordPress in their business and their life, I guess. I’m going to ask you about success, Carrie. We like to ask everybody about that topic just to explore your definition of success, personal professional, either or both, how they fit together. If you could share that with us, that’d be great. Carrie: Sure. Personally, I guess I would say that success looks like your relationships – having people that love you and support you and being able to give that love and support back to your friends or your family. If you got that, you’re the richest person in the world. Professionally, I’ve always been kind of a work to live not a live to work person. So I’m not super driven by corporate ladders or promotions. Not that those things are bad, that’s just not the way that I’m wired. I would much rather find something that makes me just enough money that I can go to whatever lifestyle I want. In my case that happens to currently be driving around the country and camping out of my car and just enjoying this beautiful green earth we live on. So the flexibility, to be able to do that, that’s maybe kind of simple, but I don’t need much. Liam: I liked the simplicity of your definitions, both the personal level of being able to not only get love and support from those around us but be able to give back and to share and support them. Because it really is a two-way street, doesn’t it? It has to be. And if it’s not, it’s not a healthy situation. And I think your approach of working to live also emphasizes that healthy relationship, healthy exchange of enough money to do what I want, but not focusing too much on money and not focusing too much on what I want. Thank you for sharing that with us, Carrie. Carrie: Sure. Thanks for asking. Tara: What are some things that you do in your daily life toward those ideas? Do you have a schedule, a plan, goals? How do you set that up? Carrie: Yeah. The current place I’m in, in my life, is not representative of maybe what the past five or six years looked like. I’ve moved out of my home, ended significant relationship and have not really put down my route yet. So the one thing I have missed is actually having some sort of a set schedule. Right now it’s more of, “all right, when can I get to a Starbucks and take advantage of the Wi-Fi and get some work done?” Work comes in some odd time pockets. So let’s say this time is not really representative. Previously, and Tara I know you’re familiar with the 12 Week Year, I would set out to do 12 Week Year. So usually in either mid to late December, early January kind of plan out what I wanted to get done for the year, and then break that into those quarterly segments. I’ve been in masterminds at various points with people who help to keep me on track or help make sure I’m reaching after my goals. But I like that model of having a big picture plan, but then having the flexibility to change direction if need be, or if an unexpected opportunity comes up. Tara: Even with your change in your routine, is there something that you that you’ve hung on to, something that you do every day? Carrie: I try to take a walk every day. And that’s not necessarily work-related, but it is just a way to kind of clear some space in my head, and also use that time to listen to a business book or taking a podcast. That’s a habit that I’ve tried to…that’s good for my mental health and sanity. And I can do that anywhere in the world. Tara: Yeah, for sure. Liam: Where have you been lately? You said you’ve been traveling, and so you’ve piqued my interest and even maybe a little jealous. Where have you gone? What have you seen? Carrie: I started in Texas. One of my missions was to just see as many national parks as I could in 2019. This is another great thing about the WordPress world. You meet people from all over the place. So you can just put your finger on a map and there’s probably somebody from WordPress that lives there. But I went to Oklahoma. So Corey and Lindsay Miller, spend some time with them. Saw my old college roommate. Then cut across to Colorado. I tried to go to the Grand Canyon but it was snowing tremendously and the road was closed that I needed to use. So I skipped the Grand Canyon this time around. Liam: Yeah, that’s not a ditch you want to slide into accidentally, is it? Carrie: No, no. I was really disappointed to miss it, but I’ll be back I’m sure. Let’s see. I spent some time in Arizona and gotten to spend time with folks from the Phoenix WordPress community. Utah, I’ve been to the Four Corners, but that was about my extent to spending time in Utah. Liam: You checked the Utah box. Well done. Carrie: I got my border picture and then I moved on. From there, I spent most of my time in California. I didn’t quite expect to spend as long out here as I have but had the opportunity to do some pet sitting for a friend and so stayed out here a little bit longer. In the middle of that, I’ve gone back to Texas and spent about a month visiting with friends and catching up there. Then tomorrow I’m going to start heading up the coastline of California and hopefully, by this weekend to be in Yosemite. Well, we’ll see how the Wi-Fi connection is. Tara: Sounds like a great adventure and a lot of driving. Do you listen to a podcast when you’re driving? I eat a lot of candy when I drive and I know that you and I both enjoy good Hot Tamales. Carrie: We do enjoy a good Hot Tamale. Oh, my goodness, yeah. They are so good for keeping you awake when you’re driving. I’ll listen to podcast. Not necessarily business or WordPress podcast, but a lot of NPR shows, and then listen to – I was going to say books on tape – audio books, and sometimes music. Just kind of depends on the mood. Tara: Have you had any surprising encounters or episodes or views or Vistas, surprising/favorite things with all the driving? Carrie: Oh, probably the most surprising happened fairly…This was back in January. I had just been to the Four Corners monument and snapped my picture there, and was headed to the Grand Canyon and making my way in that general direction. And there was a beautiful dog that was on the road. I pulled over and… I had some goldfish that I’ve been snacking on. Not Hot Tamales. I was in a salty mood I guess! But I use the goldfish to coax the dog into the car with me and ended up kind of a fun story or at least fun for anybody who’s a dog lover. Took him, made sure that he didn’t blonde anybody, he wasn’t chipped. Got his shots, his vaccinations and then ended up with the help of the inner webs, and kind of putting up the call finding a foster home for him. And I did a lot of driving to get him there, but that was a really fun experience. I remember at one point taking a client call. And I was in some place with just terrible cell connection, and I had this dog – I kind of nicknamed him Floofy because he was big fluffy. So I had Floofy sleeping in the back of my car, I was trying to transport him, and I had terrible cell reception. So I was on a rest up on the side of the road trying to have this call with a client. Thankfully, the client was very gracious person because it was not exactly the smoothest. That was unexpected. Tara: That’s a great story for your freelancing advice. Maybe don’t take client calls in the car with that cell service and a stray dog. Carrie: Yeah, yeah. The planning on that one could have been better for sure. Tara: But it worked out. It worked out. Liam: Carrie, I want to ask you about advice. One of the questions that we like to ask our guests here is around not so much advice that they’ve shared, but advice that they’ve heard or read and embraced and successfully implemented in their lives. Can you share with us some piece of advice that you’ve received and implemented successfully in your own life? Carrie: Oh, what a great question. Man, I’m trying to just pick one because thankfully, I’ve had a lot of mentors speak a lot of wisdom in my life. I think probably the most recent would be my dad who I’ve always had tremendous respect for both professionally and personally. He is also a college professor. He was talking about when he tells the students to kind of go with their bent. Everybody has a natural bent, whether they’re implying to athleticism or they’re inclined to work with their hands or inclined to be a helper or take care of people. Everybody has their bent. And when you lean into that is where you find kind of the least resistance and can find some success. My dad, of course, knows me pretty well, and he was just telling me some stories from my childhood and we were talking about my bent. So it was just kind of encouraging to hear as I think about kind of what’s this next chapter in my life look like career-wise, especially, what is my natural bent. And it is definitely towards entrepreneurial adventure, and how does that play out and how can I lean into that? I guess I haven’t really implemented it yet. It’s still kind of knocking around the noggin. Tara: Yeah, I like that idea of your bent, your skill. Have you done any of these like personality tests that are all the rage, the enneagram or all these things, that help you identify your personality type or I guess your bent in a way? Carrie: Oh, yeah. I kind of love those tests. Tara: They’re addictive, aren’t they? Carrie: Yeah. Probably the Myers Briggs. I don’t know. I did that a year ago or so – probably the most recent one. I feel like I straddle the middle on a lot of things. I’m like, “That’s not helpful.” My bent is I don’t have a bent. Apparently just right down the middle. I do love taking those things. Liam: I’m curious about the manner in which your father shared that advice. Was that when you were out visiting, and it was the two of you on the back porch, maybe having a beer as the sun went down, and he kind of looked over and says, “Carrie, let’s talk”? Or will you just shooting the bowl and asking for advice? I just love dad and advice stories. Can you share about that? Carrie: Well, at a really neat experience this past fall, I got to go to Spain with my dad and spend five weeks with him hiking across the country. Liam: Wow. Carrie: So we have a lot of opportunities to talk. So we were just talking about figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. He’s 70. And he told me, he still didn’t know what he wanted to be. And I said, “Well, that is so discouraging. You don’t know and you’re 70. How is that helping me?” That was the context. Liam: What a great experience. Five weeks just hanging out with your dad, walking, talking, probably doing a lot of nothing too in terms of just walking and focusing on the road and introspection. What a blessing to have that. Carrie: Yeah, I treasure that. I will always treasure that. I would say to anybody if they get a chance to spend time with their parents like that – and of course, not everybody is as good relationships or that opportunity. But if it does come up, I highly recommend taking it. Tara: Yeah, and having a freelance lifestyle that allows you to do that I imagine. Carrie: Exactly. Tara: Did you have Wi-Fi in your travels? Did you work at all or did you completely disconnect? Carrie: I completely disconnected. Other than uploading some photos to Instagram and phone calls of family. Tara: So you just told clients that you were going to be gone and you gave them a person to contact? Carrie: For about six months, I had been working towards having that space cleared on my calendar. I picked two active clients at that time and I introduced them to someone else who could take care of them just in case there was an emergency or they needed something while I was gone. Tara: Excellent. Wow. That’s something to keep in the back of one’s mind is having that opportunity and having the courage to do it. I think that’s a big thing. Very cool. Thanks for sharing that with us. We are running out of time. I want to acknowledge Carrie. And thank you for not only being a supporter of the show but for being a supporter of me and the WordPress community that I found, which really started with your live podcast. I have so many friends in the WordPress community that came from that show, and I’ve learned a lot from you. So personally, I want to say thank you for that. I probably wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you. So thanks. Carrie: Oh, thank you. Tara: Thanks for being here on the show, and being part of my journey too. Carrie: Thank you that means the world to me. Liam: Carrie, it’s been such a pleasure. I’ve long admired you from afar and listened to your show. So to have you on our little show today is just a wonderful way for us to celebrate our 100th episode. Thank you so much for joining us. Carrie: Absolutely. Thanks for having me guys, and congrats again on number 100. Tara: Thanks for your support. Where can people find you online if they haven’t already? Carrie: You can find me at carriedils.com or on Twitter @cdils. Tara: Thanks again, Carrie. Hope to see you soon. Bye-bye. Carrie: Thanks, guys. Liam: Thanks, Carrie. Liam: Thanks for listening to the show. We sure hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com. Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Today I'm talking to fearless freelancer and WordPress expert Carrie Dils all about how she transitioned from 1:1 client work to monetizing her knowledge on a bigger scale. If you want to move beyond time-for-money in your side hustle, this is the episode for you! Carrie has been around in the WordPress and web design community for many years – I’d even seen her name around well before I decided to start freelancing – I’d be working on a website at my day job and run into a snag, start googling and her blog would come up quite often. Her name is Carrie Dils, and I came across her again when I booked a new web design client with a pretty challenging project. I was researching how to do something, came across Carrie’s website again and saw that she had a way to just book a paid consultation call by the minute – which we’ll talk about later in this episode. So I booked a call, got some advice and then invited Carrie on the podcast to talk about how she monetized her WordPress knowledge beyond one on one client work. In today’s episode, Carrie and I dig deep into: The tipping point where Carrie took the leap from day job to full time side hustle. Creating multiple streams of revenue outside of 1:1 client work as a web designer. How to do content marketing as a web designer. How to easily sell your expertise – in any subject – by the minute. How Carrie dealt with imposter syndrome when she was first starting out The #1 skill to have as a web designer. Why you shouldn’t try to do everything yourself in your web design business. Why Carrie shifted from writing Genesis and WordPress tutorials for freelancers to teaching them how to be a successful freelancer. Carrie’s #1 piece of advice for a new web designer. Carrie’s advice on pricing. The belief Carrie had to change about herself to get where she is today. Just a quick heads up – you’ll hear some background noise in this interview – Carrie had to duck into a coffee shop to do the interview, which is totally cool with me! So let’s dive in to my interview with WordPress Expert and Fearless Freelancer Carrie Dils. So if you’re a web designer or you’re thinking about freelancing, head on over to peptalksforsidehustlers.com/freelance and that’ll send you over to my blog post all about how I got my first web design client, and you can get your hands on a freebie – my 7 Step Website Consultation Checklist and script that will walk you through how to do a consultation call with a potential client. All the resources mentioned in this episode can be found over at peptalksforsidehustlers.com/210 – and if you’re not a web designer but you want to build your own website for your side hustle, head on over to peptalksforsidehustlers.com/5day and sign up to take my Free 5 Day Website Challenge which will walk you step by step how to build your entire website with WordPress in just 5 days. See you next week! Resources mentioned in this episode: Carrie Dils How to Successfully Freelance (*this is an affiliate link) Smart Passive Income E-myth Book Profit First – Mike Michalowicz Entreleadership – Dave Ramsey Bio: Carrie Dils is an independent contractor and developer with 20 years of experience in web development and deep experience in full-scope WordPress projects. From small, locally-owned businesses to Fortune 500 companies (including Disney and Nvidia) Carrie has worked with clients to deliver creative and successful digital solutions. She’s passionate about education and empowering others to do the work they love. She hosts the OfficeHours.FM podcast for digital freelancers and small business owners, helping them grow their service-related businesses. She teaches WordPress and front-end development courses for Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. She also offers a series of business courses for freelancers at The Fearless FreelancerTM. When Carrie’s not working, she’s probably reading a book, playing with her dogs, drinking a craft beer, or taking an absurdly long walk.

This week we brought in our first guest host, who is embarking on her own adventure and living her ridiculous life, the always incredible Carrie Dils. We talked about our shared pasts and what the future might hold for all of us when (or if) we ever grow up. We recorded this episode at the beginning of Carrie embarking on a cross country trip at the beginning of January. Now, she is in California and has visited many friends along the way. Follow along with her on Twitter https://twitter.com/cdils and see what she is doing now, and on her website at: https://carriedils.com/

In this episode of PressThis we interview the infamous Carrie Dils on leveraging the Genesis framework for agencies and developers. Carrie details what you need to get started, the basic concepts of Genesis, and how to leverage Genesis to help you create better sites at a faster pace. Carrie is a community veteran with excellent Genesis courses on Lynda, LinkedIn, and carriedils.com. Listen now!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/press-this-wordpress-community-podcast/donations

In this episode of PressThis we interview the infamous Carrie Dils on leveraging the Genesis framework for agencies and developers. Carrie details what you need to get started, the basic concepts of Genesis, and how to leverage Genesis to help you create better sites at a faster pace. Carrie is a community veteran with excellent Genesis courses on Lynda, LinkedIn, and carriedils.com. Listen now!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/press-this-wordpress-community-podcast/donations

Today’s guest is Carrie Dils. Carrie is a freelancer, podcaster, writer, educator, and web developer. She runs a very popular blog where she shares her experiences as a business owner and teaches others how to build their own freelance businesses.Carrie didn’t start out as a developer. She came to it from a far more traditional business - a local coffee shop.When Carrie left the corporate world early in her career, she visited a coffee shop that she fell in love with, and decided to recreate the experience in her home town.After almost a decade working at Starbucks trying to build experience, she realized she wanted nothing to do with owning a coffee shop. Still, she was able to glean a lot of the details of running a business from the experience.She first realized she was in love with freelancing when a radio station paid her $20/hr to make banner ads. She could work when she wanted, from wherever she wanted, and that was enough to get her hooked.Despite the loving the freelance life, Carrie often found herself in situations where her clients wanted to hire her. However, it was through taking some of these opportunities that she realized just how much it meant to her to run her own business.These days, Carrie is building Fearless Freelancer - a program for freelancers who are just starting out. It provides the resources and training to help people create a freelance business they actually enjoy.In this episode Carrie talks about: How being yourself and embracing who you are is the way to provide a great experience for clients. Working in a cube farm and feeling the soul sucking drain from days spent working in an environment that wasn’t challenging her. Building something for one audience and having another one show up. Writing an opinionated book that shows the real world of freelancing. Main Takeaways Be yourself with your business. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Don’t make decisions based on emotional responses, but always check in with how a work situation is making you feel. Sometimes the people for whom you create something aren’t the ones who actually show up. The real freelance experience is not like what’s advertised - there are no hacks to a successful freelance business. Important Mentions in this Episode Fearless Freelancer Fearless Freelancer Facebook Group On twitter @cdils

Coffee and Coding Carrie Dils identifies strongly with the Technician role in Michael Gerber’s E-Myth book. She began working at Starbucks. She had a vision open her own coffee shop, and thought why not learn the ins and outs of how to make coffee and get paid to do it. But soon, she realized she didn’t want to depend on others for success. Not that her team wasn’t great, but she was done trading hours for dollars. For her birthday, Carrie’s dad signed her up for an annual subscription to Lynda. She started taking classes taught by Morten Rand-Hendriksen which is where her career started rolling as a freelance web developer. The first phase was beginning to understand WordPress where she assembled a site from existing parts. Next, she began doing a little amount of custom design work, going in and changing the code. Her big realization came after a combination of listening to podcasts and spending time with the right people. “I’m not just creating websites. I’m not just making websites and getting a check for doing it. I want to actually make a meaningful contribution to someone’s business.” This is when she knew she wanted to become a consultant. She attended Pressnomics and WordCamp conferences, where hallway discussions inspired her and she met smart, savvy people who mentored her. This is where she found the challenge she needed and the goals to shoot for. She wanted to be thinking strategically. Lessons in Leading Now, she’s been consulting and educating for 3-4 years. Working for Lynda, she travels to California to record lessons around 3 times a year. She began blogging tutorials on her website as a way to give back to the community. The WordPress community is very generous with learning, and the positive affirmations and people she is able to help through teaching are strong motivators for her. As a freelancer, Carrie says you eventually hit a ceiling. You realize you can only work so many hours, and you’ll never increase your income. This dilemma is what brought Carrie to pursue passive income. Through Lynda, this was possible. But passive income isn’t just no work, all pay. It is an incredible amount of work up front, that eventually pays off. “I don’t want to be a thought leader or a guru, I don’t care about any of that crap. But the reality is if you want to be findable if you want people to do business with you, you have to have visibility.” Building the Bridge While many people are exploiting the title of thought-leader and expert today with money grabs and hype, Carrie believes true leaders don’t want your money if they aren’t the right people to give you value. In the WordPress space, there is a buzz around Carrie for her effective, innovative teaching and guidance. She dislikes the thought of there being a “cool kids” or “insiders” club though, and this keeps her motivated to share her knowledge and be authentic. Creating a Facebook group and connecting with her audience through newsletters has been a fruitful way Carrie has found she can combat the “insiders” club, lead and teach. Building a bridge and creating a two-way street is crucial to the learning process. With three different brands, Office Hours FM, Carrie Dils and The Fearless Freelancer, Carrie has lots of thoughts and ideas swimming in her head when it comes to housing content. While she doesn’t have all of the answers, she shares that moving her podcast Office Hours FM to its own site really helped make everything cleaner, despite losing some SEO points. Her parting challenge for you? Simplify. Contact: Personal Website Twitter Office Hours FM Fearless Freelancer Credits: Hosted by Jeff Large Produced and Powered by Come Alive Creative Music provided by Birocratic