In this week's Part 2 story of WP Ninjas, James and Kevin talk candidly about the stages of their business; successes, failures, and general curiosities await.

• Celebrating renewals and sales.
• McDonald’s gets frork'd!
• Making changes in the digital market versus the physical space.
• Getting your product known
• Branding
  • Hiring a design team.
  • Enter FocusLab
  • The investment risk and reward of branding.
• Kevin’s move back to America, from U.K.
• The impact of James and Kevin finding out they would both become fathers.
  • How that revelation translated into kicking the business into the next gear.
• Kevin’s plot to influence James into hiring the first employee.
• Transitioning to the first office space.
• The impact of annual renewals.
  • How ignorance garnered experience.
• How Kevin’s daughter, in part, led to a hiring frenzy.
  • The potential hires that did work out…and the ones that didn't.
• The 2016 office switch.
• Going back to FocusLab to revamp the UI
  • The intensity and lead up to launch.
  • Launching the 3.0 redesign, reaping the benefits.
• Bringing on Jon and KR.
• All business is a risk, there are always investments in startups, and most things are a gamble.
• The Keystones of Growth

Get ready for Ninja History 101, as our shinobi hosts recount the great tale of how Ninja Forms was born. Many a battle were fought, and a veritable storybook of experiences has been written. Commence part 1 of this epic narrative journey!

• Sponsorship…The return of Taco Bell
• Six years as a business.
  • Where has it gone?
• Model Experimentation
  • Deciding if the add-on model was right for us.
• The Ninja Forms/WP Ninjas origin story
  • The first client.
  • The first version of the product.
  • On increasing visibility.
  • The freemium model and raising prices.
  • The benefits greatly outweighed the price critique.
  • Switching to EDD
  • The single most pivotal action in Ninja Forms history: the add-on model.
  • The freakout James and Kevin experienced as sales more than doubled, thanks to the add-on model.
• Challenge your assumptions.
• Be willing to be wrong.
• Success is relative, and on no one’s clock.

Disclaimer: Adventures in Businessing, and the hosts thereof are not certified professionals in the field of mental health. As such, all views expressed in this episode should be treated with a grain of salt, since they are representative of personal experiences, and individual life hacks. If you yourself experience issues with time management, productivity, sleep, and/or mental health, please consult a local, qualified professional. Disclaimer aside, we hope you have fun listening to this week's episode of AIB!

Topics Include:

• Shout out to the startup podcast: Hallway Chats
• AIB listener review roundup.
• Sponsorship of the week.
• How we get things done.
  • Managing our schedules and getting through the day.
  • Barriers:
    • Troublesome wrangling of to-dos.
    • Remembering to eat and sleep.
    • Not saying no and spreading yourself too thin.
    • Improperly organizing your day.
  • Maximizing your peaks and valleys
  • Common tasks that get dropped and why.
  • Time management:
    • Night owls versus morning larks.
    • Irrational guilt affecting performance and resulting in overworking.
    • Controversial beliefs on circadian rhymes.
  • A day in the life of our hosts.
    • The value of chunking.
    • Mind dumps: archiving tasks for later.
  • What do you wish you were making time for?

Resources/Mentions:

• Evernote
• @nsfwfw
• Hallway Chats
• Night Owls vs Early Risers
• The Genetics of Sleep
• Disorders that May be Disrupting Your Sleep

Every once in a while Jon can't be at the recording and he has the really cool recording set-up. I do not an thus the mix isn't as pristine as we would like it. In this episode of AIB we discuss development processes and how we are adjusting to become a more effective development team. Special guest, Kyle Johnson, WP Ninjas Senior Developer.