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Member Spotlight: Matt Medeiros

By Sarah

matt medeiros

Thanks to our Twitter-friendship, it felt like Matt Medeiros was a Groundwork! member long before he actually stepped through the doors into our space. We knew so much about each other from our social media personas that it was like picking up a conversation with an old friend.

When he’s not killing it on Twitter, Matt is a bit of a local WordPress hero. He co-founded Slocum Studio, a WordPress design and development agency, and he produces the popular WordPress Podcast Matt Report. And yes, if you WordPress nerds are wondering, Matt Medeiros did interview Matt Mullenwig on Matt Report. (Just don’t ask me to repeat that out loud.)

We are stoked to have Matt join the Groundwork! community, especially since he is bringing the Southcoast WordPress Meetup to our space. Read on for Matt’s thoughts on to-do lists, wrangling helpdesk tickets, and life as a public-facing introvert.

What’s your profession?

I’m the co-founder of a WordPress design & development agency. So that places me into the category of a small business owner, software consultant, product creator, web strategist, technologist, project manager, and business development lead — so, a lot of hats :)

We build and create software solutions for medium to large organizations that need to scale their WordPress websites. It could come in the form of marketing and product websites to hosted web applications powered by WordPress.

Describe a typical work day for you.

There’s usually two phases to a day: static and dynamic.

Repetitive (static) tasks like project check-in calls, helpdesk support, and customer sales follow-up e-mails. You know, moving the normal flow of business along. I like to triage our helpdesk tickets first thing in the AM. Since we sell software to anyone in the world, we receive a lot of requests after hours. I try and handle most meetings before 2 PM Monday through Thursday and before 12 PM on Friday’s and once that’s out of the way, I move to normal inbox clearing.

Dynamic tasks could come in the form of our marketing or business development efforts. That ranges form creating new blog posts or tutorial videos, to demonstrating our product to potential partners. Somewhere in the mix, I’ll schedule to record a podcast episode or two with a co-host or a new guest to the show.

What’s the biggest challenge you face at your job?

Competing in a global market and demonstrating the value of hiring *real* WordPress experts in such a competitive landscape. Second would be finding solid local (to the Southcoast) talent for front-end and back-end development. Finding folks who are great with HTML/CSS and have a strong understanding of PHP + JavaScript is becoming increasingly difficult for me to find in our hometown.

Do you have a morning routine?

I’d like to say it was 50 pushups right when I wake up, but it’s been a while since I’ve stayed consistent with that. I have a new goal of consuming more water, so I’ve been tackling at least 1 bottle of water straight away.

On most days, it’s simply avoiding any work-related e-mails until I’ve had breakfast and coffee to get my brain going. I’ll check my Twitter feed and read some articles via the Feedly app to see if there’s any important news or announcements I’ve missed. From there, I’ll dive into work e-mails, Slack to communicate with the team and work out of Wunderlist a to-do app which runs my entire life.

What are your favorite productivity tips or hacks?

Like many entrepreneurs and business owners, I do a lot and forget a lot. Wunderlist is my go to to-do app which I can access from every phone, laptop, PC, and tablet I own. As soon as I have an idea, I write it down. Whenever I need to remember to pick up the milk, I write it down.

As important as it is to write everything down, it’s doubly important to review all of these items. Spending a portion of a scheduled day per week to weed through your collective thoughts is the best tip I can give. Make sure you schedule and stick to it.

What do you listen to during the day?

I listen to a lot of podcasts that are relevant to my area of expertise. Other WordPress podcasts which deal with different topics than my own, marketing podcasts and general startup news/info podcasts are usually on the top of my list. When I actually need to crank out a lot of writing or work-related tasks, I’m usually tuning into EDM stations on Soundcloud or Spotify.

How do you benefit from using a coworking space?

For me, it’s an office away from the office. It’s a good change of pace and I recommend it to anyone who’s “stuck” working remotely from their home. It’s a great blend of being around humans in a coffee shop (that so many of us default to) and a professional office atmosphere. It’s also another great way to extend your local network and be part of another community — which is always beneficial, in any capacity.

What’s in your digital toolbox? (Favorite apps, hardware, etc.)

What is the most surprising or unusual aspect of your life?

It’s probably not so unusual, but I’d say that with all of the public facing stuff that I do – speaking, podcasting, sales – I’m still a a bit introvert at the core. There always comes a time where I need to decompress from a speaking gig or after being at a conference all day.

What inspires you?

The pursuit of building and creating something from nothing. It comes in all shapes, sizes, and doesn’t just stop with me but passing the motivation on to do the same for others as well. I do a lot of mentoring and coaching with other businesses in my space and I really enjoy being able to help others. I think there’s a lot of fluff to be found online and every once in a while, someone needs to tell them it’s going to take hard work to find the success they’re after.

Sarah
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