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Marketing Automation in WordPress with FluentCRM and More

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المحتوى المقدم من By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett and Entrepreneur & Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, Education, WordPress Development & Online Business., By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett, Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, WordPress Development, and Online Business.. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett and Entrepreneur & Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, Education, WordPress Development & Online Business., By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett, Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, WordPress Development, and Online Business. أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.

In this LMScast episode, Shahjahan Jewel shares the story of how FluentCRM started as an internal tool for WP Manage Ninja before becoming a full-fledged product. He also shares insights about marketing automation

Shahjahan Jewel is the owner of WP Manage Ninja, a business recognized for developing well-liked WordPress products including FluentCRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Bookings, and Fluent Support, was founded and is led by Shahjahan Jewel. Shahjahan highlights that FluentCRM offers powerful marketing automation and CRM functionality at a far cheaper cost than SaaS options like ActiveCampaign since it was developed with small businesses, creators, and WordPress users in mind.

Image of Shahjahan Jewel from WP Manage Ninja

Additionally, he emphasizes how crucial it is to integrate CRM features directly into WordPress so that users can handle all facets of their business including customer interactions and courses in one location and not depend on third-party systems. Shahjahan also covers the difficulties of using WordPress to manage a CRM, particularly for bigger email lists, and how Fluent CRM is designed to meet those needs.

Shahjahan also discusses FluentBookings, another WordPress Manage Ninja product that draws inspiration from Calendly and Cal.com.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. I’m joined by a special guest and friend. His name is Shahajan Jewell. He’s the founder and CEO of WP Manage Ninja, which creates a lot of products. Fluent CRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Bookings, Fluent Support, and much, much more. This is going to be a fun episode.

We’re going to talk about tech. And we’re going to talk about entrepreneurship. We’re going to talk about WordPress. The first welcome to the show.

Shahjahan Jewel: Hi, Chris. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m really excited to chat with you today. And I think it’s a long time. We chat last time. I maybe that was in Taiwan.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, we had some good chats in Taiwan. And I remember, I think I first met you in Greece in person. Yeah. And I think sometimes when entrepreneurs get together, they have a lot to talk about. So it’s very easy to talk to you in this unique world that we find ourselves in. But first I wanted to get the story behind fluent CRM.

And the reason why this is really important to you out there watching or listening is. In the learning management system space, you can do a lot with an LMS and a CMS like WordPress, but you need a CRM too, to do more marketing automation, broadcast emails, do more advanced stuff with your contact records.

Can you tell us the story of how Fluent CRM came to be? Okay.

Shahjahan Jewel: So it’s a bit different. It was not intended to be a product actually. We started, selling press plugins back to the 18 and then when we released an update then we had to let our customers know.

That we have an update or, promotional email and those type of things. And first we tried, MailChimp MailChimp is really great, simple. The problem was actually like every time we have a sale, we have to, custom coding or, export the CSV and import those of the thing.

And we are not like marketer, but, we are all the developers. So we, we thought okay, How what can we do? Maybe we can just, have a very simple page where you can just type the subject and the body and hit send, and it will send those emails. So that was like the very fast version.

And, we are using it and, our developers and me too. Added use features like one of the, struggle we had like when someone actually send us an email or give us a support ticket, then actually we had to find, which products they bought or what attributes they have in the other system.

Then then we made a system like, okay, if I search by an email. Or, name, I will get all the details of that user. Then actually it became okay, it’s having shape and then actually work for a year on top of that. Then we see that, okay, this is something that we can actually release as, open source and people can use that.

That’s the behind the story. After, really the first version that was like, pretty fast version. When we released to the public we have a very minimal features and then people actually started using it. Give us, lots of requests. Like I need this integration.

And then actually okay, let’s org on it. We had a very, loans of Fluent CRM. And what we did actually, we reinvested all the money that we got from the loans campaign into it, and then we made it a really big so that’s the backstory of Fluent CRM.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I, one of the things that fascinates me about a WordPress based CRM and email marketing automation is how affordable it is.

As an example, I’ve been using active campaign for a long time. I have a somewhat large email list and the pricing got up to around a thousand dollars a month. And then I reduced the level of the plan I had cause I wasn’t using all the features. And then just this month they raised the price on my plan, another 100.

So it just keeps coming. And I’m like, it’s like you mentioned MailChimp. It’s great. We recommend it. It’s a, it’s got a free, easy way to get started, but once you scale it, it’s challenging. And I find it really impressive with Fluent CRM and a lot of your other tools to how Like fluent support is an example.

I pay help scout a lot of money every month. And I just want to get how you think about that. Cause you’re really disrupting the market in terms of providing in many ways, a more powerful solution at a much cheaper price. How do you think about that and design for that?

Shahjahan Jewel: So in a sense, like actually, we, I never reinvent any wheel or we never invented anything new.

The idea behind, all of our products actually, that is, we want to build products that will help the, small businesses like us or a, a shop owner, or, a creator who is, building a course or selling something like that, and, all those tools that exist.

Okay. So like you, you mentioned like active campaign is great. Like fluency RME is very inspired by ActiveCampaign. We actually used ActiveCampaign for months to understand ActiveCampaign, how the automation work. So we tried to mimic the ActiveCampaign automation into Fluent CRM.

And so our idea is actually, there has lots of tools in SaaS services. And many people actually like us want to use self posted services. They want to reduce the cost. They don’t want to give tax for success. Like when you have 2000 subscriber, MailChimp is free, but when you have 10, 000 subscriber, you are paying hundreds of dollars per month.

So that’s the idea, actually, like all the tools we want to. Build those tools. So it worked in self hosted it, use your server and it was great. It integrated with everything. So like fluency and our idea is actually like when you install that in your WordPress, I know you have say like a lift elements in store, so I will, so all the data of library limits into the same red database.

So I can actually easily, query those data. And when you see a customer, you can actually see who is courses this user enrolled, or I want to see who is my contacts are completed is a course or purchased a course. Those type of things like you are hosting your, e commerce, you are hosting your learning management system in WordPress, but you are, managing your contacts in a another server, another instance.

That’s not a, I think, ideal experience for a business owner, because you have to go back and forth to many places. So that’s our idea is actually like you are managing your, entire online business in WordPress. These tools should be in WordPress. So that’s by personal view about the self hosted open source and everything.

Chris Badgett: I love that. I think we, we think very similarly, like at the beginning of Lifter LMS in WordPress. So this is like in 2013 even the inside of WordPress, you had to get, All these different solutions to create a learning management system, like a separate membership plugin, separate e commerce, separate engagement, gamification stuff.

So we started with this philosophy of how can we just make it easier on the user and kind of consolidate? And I think that. With learning management system websites, almost all of them would benefit from a CRM. Why not have it in WordPress? And that just, it makes a lot of sense. I wanted to ask you a technical question about it.

I get asked this a lot and I’m hoping you can help me I can learn from you on how to answer it better. But when you do like you have a web hosting account, you put WordPress on it, you start adding other tools that send emails, a CRM and email marketing automation tool like FluencyRM, especially if you’re doing a broadcast email.

Can you explain the limitation of just WordPress by itself sending email and then maybe using Fluent CRM as an example, how do you give people the confidence that it’s going to handle the email?

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so this is the, this is our Kind of challenge and not technical challenge, but it’s to educate our users.

It can handle your your server can handle , something like that. So IGA is actually for last couple of years, uh, the, we like many users actually, open support ticket okay, I want like friends CRM, but I’m really afraid that, something will break my email will something will be, will go wrong, something like that.

So only thing I actually like say to customers Look, you are selling your products from your WordPress. You are using WooCommerce. WooCommerce is really big and your server can handle that. You can actually host your email marketing tool this way. And the way we build Fluent CRM.

It very like we had to really do lots of overengineering to build FluentJRM. So something like that, say say you have, you are sending like, 50, 000 emails. And you are getting lots of traffic too. And if a friend said, I’m see that your, server memory is up to 70%, it will stop sending email.

We had to do, lots of background things. If we, if it would be a SAS solution, then we could actually easily, solve this technical challenges from our server because we don’t have any, control over the server. So that’s why we had to do this thing.

So influential and we like this, like we have a very powerful automation. We had to find out what’s the super optimal way we can do that. How we can manage something like we want to run only our code when these things happen. So yeah, definitely that’s like challenging.

Sometimes we find like someone actually sending say 50, 000 emails. And it’s say, they’re saying like, okay, how, why is. Taking one day or 12 hours or 15 hours. Then we had to, explain that when we asked them, we suffer you are using, so maybe they are using a like a shared server, like 5 per month server.

Then we had to explain that okay, you are, managing 50, 000 Contacts you are. sending these emails. So better, at least you are, buy a VPS like 20 per month and host that and you will get the full power and there will be no issue. This type of things like educating the users.

That’s currently challenging, two years ago, the things we, faced about this issue. Now it’s much less. I think more of most of the users are more educated now. There has, lots of good software management tools like they they let you connect your VPS.

So some, so there is lots of things, not like shared server, but there is lots of, new server management tools. They also help the overall ecosystem. I think after a few years, this will not be problem because, the servers are getting more powerful, less expensive.

Yeah, I think it’s a good thing.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, and I think the market is maturing too and realizing the difference between a five dollar a month shared hosting account for a brochure website or a Platform that needs more resources and there’s so many great hosts out there that are Doing better and offering, more resources.

If we look at what I call an education entrepreneur, somebody who’s selling courses and coaching, and if we look at coaching specifically the, there’s the booking element of Hey, I’m ready to book my coaching call with the coach. And I love this one because you’ve basically taken what tools like Calendly or acuity scheduling.

Do but you’ve brought it into WordPress. Tell us about that. Like how the About fluent booking.

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so I am a big fan of Cal. com so we used both cal. com and calendly And then I saw there has no plug in wordpress Like this smooth Calendly or Cal. com, WordPress.

And also we are our marketing team actually planning to do sales call. So our idea was actually when someone actually purchased one of our license, select French CRM, then we will do a sales call. They can just, come to our site and then they will, fill up the form and schedule a call.

And then as I am very much, develop developer mindset and, it’s not actually, I would not say it’s a good thing, but, that’s what I am. So okay let’s, build that build a very minimal version just for our use and we can do that. Then, we the first version we started using it we, and then then we said okay, let’s build this as a project product.

And then we like work like seven, eight months. And, we try to. You can say we are really inspired by cal. com. I really love it I love the company how they operate and they are also like open source. They but they’re you know you need you know, lots of things to set up and everything and So that’s you know, like we built fluent booking And I think you know now, thousands of people are using it.

So it’s good

Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome Another one, and I’m starting to detect a pattern here that, yeah, so you’re scratching your own business problem.

Shahjahan Jewel: actually, like all of our for most of our product, we are the biggest user. A few months ago we released F Boards.

I think we are the, second largest user of that product frameworks like. alternate of, Trello. And so our whole company runs on that in fluent boards as a project management tool. And so fluent support, that’s the same kind of same story. We want to host everything ourself. So when we do, we, we try to find a Open source or paid version of that.

And then we see that if that, what’s for us so the fluent support before print support, we are using, awesome support. It’s a WordPress plugin. We’re using the premium version. The problem is actually they stopped, developing that plugin. So it was like the world is style custom post type thing.

And, our, uh, we could not use those data effectively and as well as it, it just slow for our, support agents. Then we built the fluent support and we tried to optimize that every millisecond level. Like the idea was actually if I, save one second we get like 300, 400 tickets per day and then it will actually help us a lot save time.

So that’s the idea of our products philosophy is actually. We need that. Let’s build it and then make it, sophisticated and then release for the public. And get the feedback as much as possible from the users and all on that.

Chris Badgett: I love that. And just to go over that fluent boards is like Trello, which is project management, which most course creators, coaches, education entrepreneurs need.

And Fluent support is similar to help scout or free scout so that you can manage email with teams and stuff like that, which is super helpful. These are tools we as business owners use every day. What’s your recommendation? Let’s say there’s an, a small business entrepreneur out there. Do you recommend they put it all on one website or have subdomains or how do you?

Like what’s your advice there? We get this question a lot. We see people do both. They like have a site with everything or they move things out. If you could advise, how would you advise?

Shahjahan Jewel: It’s just contextual, right? Different people on to manage different type way, but I can share what I, we do, we host everything in our main domain.

The leisure is actually, like our shop is in our main domain our user account also there. And our support also there, our CRM is also there because if we, I would, host our CRM and subdomain, then it could again got the disconnect connection, right? We could not use all the data, all the events happening in my main store.

If you go to, our store, buy FluentCRM, I can easily actually, run an automation. I can send the welcome email series for you. I can check if you purchased, FluentForms or not. Then I can, send an email about the FluentForms. And, try to educate you about those type of things.

Now I can actually. Easily feature like who is who are our, main top paying customers, which products they’re using. So that’s for that. We use actually everything together in our main domain. So it’s less moving part. So that’s my, personal preference.

That’s how we actually, design these things.

Chris Badgett: I like that. I started with more separate stuff, but over time, they’ve all been coming back to just keep it simple and just get good hosting and you’re good to go.

Shahjahan Jewel: If we, if I need to upgrade my server, I can easily do that. Because even if I do that, all the things in different servers, I had to buy multiple servers, right?

So instead of buy the multiple servers, I can, buy the big server in it and use it. Let’s talk

Chris Badgett: about some of your entrepreneur journey stuff. Did you, a lot of people in our field start as an agency and building sites for clients. Did you do that or no?

Shahjahan Jewel: Okay. Yeah. So that’s the, my story is the same.

I started WordPress back in 2019. So I just started my university graduation engineering. And then, I I started building websites for myself like how to build the website. I had no idea. Okay. So I started with if you want yeah, so there was like blogger.

com was really like blogspot from Google. So that was like really popular. Then I can customize it. How I can, build something that I can customize. So that, I heard about WordPress. And then I, in 2011 I started my first like agency business. In that time mostly we would we are working with, few different, agencies in USA, basically, and USA, one was USA and another one is in health sector.

We were, building the tools for them. So mostly those project or with Laravel and Laravel just started like version three and people started using it we also, loved it the Laravel. And then I kept that business for, I think 17. And after that, then I see that okay. I built many things. I want to now build the product. It’s like the problem was agency business in that time for me you know, lots of projects coming. I am working on a project after three, four, five, six months. I have to move to another project. And then the same story goes every time and when I stop, working like, my revenue stream is not actually that that way it’s not, anywhere.

So that’s, then I realized that, okay let’s try to, build product for WordPress. Because I, in that time, I have a very great experience with WordPress. And that, that then I started, my first plugin was in 2018. And that, that was Ninja Table.

Chris Badgett: That was which one?

Ninja Table. What was Ninja Table?

Shahjahan Jewel: So you say it is a very, it was, so it was another story actually. So in my, agency, I so I was working on a with the bank. And that bank actually, they have to show some data in their office site at the front end was the banker bank’s front end website was and the idea was actually they have some data and they have to, manage that easily and show that in the front end and that need to be very searchable and also mobile friendly.

So then I could not find a, single plugin that can do it in WordPress in that time. So I think that is like 16 or 17, something like that. I built that plugin very simple like you can manage the data in the backend and it will show on the front end. Then actually I from that, I worked a couple of months and then, released us free.

Within just a few months, it got 5, 000 active installation. I was getting like lots of emails. Like I need this feature. I need this feature. And some people email me, okay, I am using this, plugin. I want to donate you. How can I donate you something like that? And then I thought okay, now.

Maybe this can be my first product

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. You have over or somewhere around 110 team members How did you?Let’s look at today Like what percentage like where are the people in terms of like developers designers marketers?

Shahjahan Jewel: Wow. Yeah. So around 30 percent 35 percent are developer. And another 30 percent is marketer.

Then we have support. So we have lots of support people. I think around 20 to 25 percent support. So that’s the distribution. And, I think it got crazy big. I know even I I don’t know how it got crazy big. So I think most of those hires actually happened in the COVID.

So when COVID started, and. We are getting, getting crazy. Like we are having lots of, sales, support, everything. Then actually, so when COVID started, our team members were like 25, 20 or 25. When we reopen our office, then our team members are like 60. And wow, so then, we try to, so another thing is actually like why we are, we have, lots of people the thing is actually like is a product is actually like a startup.

Normally we don’t share resources. So like a developer, we’re working on friends here and he will never work on fluent homes. And so that’s why every product is like a startup and they have a team. So there, those are like cross functional team. So from developer, marketing, and also the support.

And from this three department, we call it a team. And they have a like team lead and he’s the, managing everything. He’s the general manager of that product and he managed all the things when we, release update from the marketing, how we will, market these things, something like that.

And I think that’s why. It got big. If we share the resources, then maybe we would not be that big because same person would handle multiple things. But the problem is actually like when a person actually handle multiple things. Then he get distracted. So sometimes a product, uh, is not getting enough attention.

So we want all the products to be succeed. And so that’s that’s where we are, so many people.

Chris Badgett: So at your current stage, how do you see your role in what you do day to day or monthly,

Shahjahan Jewel: Developer, I told you, like I am, I still try to, code as much as possible, but I don’t get much time to, code.

So that I said, so all the, People are managed by, his team. And in the last couple of years, I tried to build those team. I tried to build those leaders from his, team. And then I, we also have another level that is like department wise. So like from the developer, I have, I have the engineering manager.

From marketing, I have CMO and also for big product, I have like marketing lead of that specific product from support. I have several leads So in the last couple of years, I tried to build this thing. There’s a structure. So even when I normally every year, I, I love traveling. You already know that.

So when I, go to traveling sometimes I, I never, check my emails or I never check my discord channel what people are doing because they are like autonomous, they are, self sufficient. So that’s that was, I think in my entrepreneur yeah, that was the hardest part, to make those structure.

Chris Badgett: Very cool. Very cool. In terms of marketing and growth, And maybe speak in generalities or specific stories, whether somebody is a course creator or any kind of small business owner or a WordPress professional, what have you found in your growth, like some marketing things that tend to work well for WP managing?

So

Shahjahan Jewel: for us the one thing really worked for us and that is word of mouth. Till last year we had zero marketing paid advertisement budget. We never run any ads this year. We are like testing some, ads social media ads, Google ads, those type of thing.

But auto mount, that really helped us a lot. So something like, so think about it. Some like that, week, one of our customer asked a feature for influence CRM and this week we we had a, a schedule, real estate, and then I asked the team, okay, let’s, try to, build that feature and ship it.

And we shipped it. I think several people asked for that feature, Facebook community. And after we release those user was really happy. And I think this type of experience when a customer get from a from a, plugin vendor on something like they never forget those things.

So when someone will ask for a recommendation or something, he will actually say that. Okay, use the friends here and we’re playing forms, something like that. So that helped us a lot. Another thing really helped. And that is from our support we try to, extra mile for a customer.

So sometimes our support engineers actually like to spend several hours to solve a problem. Even it’s not, our support scope and that is something really, helped us. And and when we, give better support and listen to our users communicate very clearly transparent way.

Then actually they purchase, all of our kind of follow up products. We have lots of customers who, purchase more than three products from us and our retention rate is really high.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I love the saying that the best marketing is a good product and that creates, word of mouth.

And then we get that too at Lifter LMS, cause we try hard and support that like people talk about that. It’s a differentiator. Support is literally a feature of the product. So treat it like that. How do you think about growing so fast? And you also just have like, when you release something, I noticed there’s a lot of integrations.

You just seem to have a lot of speed. So tell us about

Shahjahan Jewel: speed. It’s also a, our own power really, poor thing. So all of our way from the very first in WordPress, lots of the, companies or things there has, they, there has a big, very established business model that make really, lots of money for the company and that is tire based pricing, like if you.

Purchase this then you will get certain add ons. If you purchase, higher, you will get all those features. And the starter is that it’s a pro, but it does not have many features. And that’s really helped for a company to make more money. The problem is actually it’s not the, I think it’s very, my personal thing.

Okay. That it’s not a best expense for you. So from the very first from all, for all of our plugins, what we did actually, we don’t lock any feature for different pairs. So like when you actually, like if you, our, flint share and pricing is, it starts with 129. If you purchase on 29, only restriction is actually like you are getting the license for single license.

Someone is purchasing like 499 is agency. You will get like 50 site license. So that’s the only different and we don’t have any add on. When you actually purchase, fluent ceramic install that if you have lifter if you have WooCommerce EDD or any plugin that we have integration that will be automatically activated.

And that’s the, experience I want to give, I want to give the, very frictionless experience for the user. And I think, that is that also help they get better experience. We get less support ticket and yeah, that is we really like core thing.

I know, if we had like tiredness, We could make more money. Maybe our revenue would grow like 30 percent or 40 percent but that’s the this is the path we choose awesome.

Chris Badgett: I heard you say in another interview that Money is not the most important thing to you. So what motivates you?

Shahjahan Jewel: Yes, that’s true so my theory is actually say I am making X amount of money now next year, if I make five X amount of money, my lifestyle will not change.

I like it will not, it’s not like I have to buy a jet or I have a Tesla or something. The lifestyle I am living that’s the, that’s like constant I will do that. So when I had I have not lots of money. Maybe I, I had a level of my lifestyle, but it’s now it’s the like max, I don’t have anything like, I don’t so it’s not something like I cannot do that for money.

So what really motivate actually, like when I get a review, when I get a good word from a customer, or when I go to an org camp, I meet people and. They are excited about my product. They know me, that’s kind of thing like that really, motivate me. So another story is actually, I think, two years ago I got a very good offer.

Someone wanted to, acquire the whole company. And they really offered an amount of money that, I could go to retirement. I don’t have to, work a single day. And then I realized. Say, I am, selling the company, I am going to determine what I will do, what will my deal look like?

And I see that will be really boring. And I can’t, live without the life I am having. I cannot live with the team member I am interacting with every day. So that’s really very important for me. Like I, I want to, do things that I really love every day that make me like alive, feel alive.

Chris Badgett: So yeah. Creators have to create. So be careful with your company. What in this line of thinking and particularly for you with a large organization, how do you think about company culture and staying positive? Cause it’s easy. There’s challenges when you work on the internet, for example you may have some angry, probably every day there’s an angry customer in support or there is.

A team member who’s maybe burning out or having challenges or you’re having challenges in your life or so. You strike me as a positive, optimistic person, but like, how do you shape a culture? That’s, and it’s okay to have bad days and challenges and everything, but how do you think about that?

Cause that really matters in a company.

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, definitely. So yeah, what culture or, environment is really, matter for a company. Or our company, we have very, some core values. So these are values we hold whatever happens, these are super, super important and all of them is actually, we must have to respect each other in our organization.

Orchestrate space. Okay, we have to make sure that it’s really work friendly for everyone. Okay. So that can be, sometimes we get really, very, angry customer from support. And in that case, sometimes I say that our support people, we say that okay, for those customers, assign me those tickets.

And sometimes I had to. Tell my customer like, okay, you are interacting with a human being, so please, if you want, I can, instantly refund you, but please, be social. We are here to help you. Okay. We are not, rob your money or anything. So that’s I try to help my members, I try to understand what my, what my team, what specific team member want what’s their goal, and then I try to help them with their, career wise.

Sometimes, we have, many developer many people in my developer team who started their career support and then they moved to, diff team, and that’s the culture. Anyone can access anyone. So anyone can, come to my, room anytime and ask me a question or anyone can say something.

It’s not like that I say something in my office and everyone must follow that. If someone thinks it’s not the right thing to do, they can definitely, argue that they can definitely tell me that, okay, maybe we can do. This way this is a better way. This is not the best way. So that’s the culture from every step in my office that I I built, and I think that’s very important.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. You’re obviously a visionary and an innovator. Is there anything that you’re you’d like to share about the future or what you’re excited about now, or new products you’re working on or anything like that?

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so yeah, definitely. So we really, invest Almost from the, when we started the company, we always all the money we make profit or revenue.

Most of them actually, goes to reinvestment and I did not, start another business or anything, but within this business. And from to R and D to, hiring more people working on new things, solving problems. We are working with some exciting things and I am really excited for this year.

Yeah, we will have. I think few new product this year. And those are something like really big, like we are working for the last two years for a product. And I am excited.

Chris Badgett: One last question here. How do you think about the small business customer that you’re building for? Who is that person?

And I know it’s you guys so it’s easy. You just scratch what you need, but any other ways you think about that when you’re. Innovating or designing product.

Shahjahan Jewel: When we like building a new product or anything our, ideal persona is actually a small business. So that is a creator.

or someone who has a online shop, who was like, say, you can say maybe the yearly revenue is, a few million dollars 10, 20 people in that team, they’re working something. And that’s when we design something we always think about them can they use them?

And so that’s the thinking we use to design like everything. That’s really help. Like when you have like specific category of the people, like I’m building only for them, then it’s easier to target easier to, create those type of experience.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s Shah Jahan Jewel.

And I want to encourage you to check out WP managed ninja. com that has all the products. But particularly check out Fluent CRM Fluent Booking, Fluent Support, and Fluent Forms for if you’re looking for a form plugin. And it’s a, it’s an honor to catch up with you. I always enjoy our chats and I’m really excited for what you guys are doing and the way you’re doing it in the world.

Keep up the amazing work. We’ll have to do this again down the road. Thanks so much.

Shahjahan Jewel: Thank you.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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المحتوى المقدم من By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett and Entrepreneur & Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, Education, WordPress Development & Online Business., By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett, Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, WordPress Development, and Online Business.. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett and Entrepreneur & Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, Education, WordPress Development & Online Business., By WordPress LMS Elearning Expert Chris Badgett, Online Marketing Business Strategy Expert Chris Badgett on Teaching, WordPress Development, and Online Business. أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.

In this LMScast episode, Shahjahan Jewel shares the story of how FluentCRM started as an internal tool for WP Manage Ninja before becoming a full-fledged product. He also shares insights about marketing automation

Shahjahan Jewel is the owner of WP Manage Ninja, a business recognized for developing well-liked WordPress products including FluentCRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Bookings, and Fluent Support, was founded and is led by Shahjahan Jewel. Shahjahan highlights that FluentCRM offers powerful marketing automation and CRM functionality at a far cheaper cost than SaaS options like ActiveCampaign since it was developed with small businesses, creators, and WordPress users in mind.

Image of Shahjahan Jewel from WP Manage Ninja

Additionally, he emphasizes how crucial it is to integrate CRM features directly into WordPress so that users can handle all facets of their business including customer interactions and courses in one location and not depend on third-party systems. Shahjahan also covers the difficulties of using WordPress to manage a CRM, particularly for bigger email lists, and how Fluent CRM is designed to meet those needs.

Shahjahan also discusses FluentBookings, another WordPress Manage Ninja product that draws inspiration from Calendly and Cal.com.

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Browse more recent episodes of the LMScast podcast here or explore the entire back catalog since 2014.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. I’m joined by a special guest and friend. His name is Shahajan Jewell. He’s the founder and CEO of WP Manage Ninja, which creates a lot of products. Fluent CRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Bookings, Fluent Support, and much, much more. This is going to be a fun episode.

We’re going to talk about tech. And we’re going to talk about entrepreneurship. We’re going to talk about WordPress. The first welcome to the show.

Shahjahan Jewel: Hi, Chris. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m really excited to chat with you today. And I think it’s a long time. We chat last time. I maybe that was in Taiwan.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, we had some good chats in Taiwan. And I remember, I think I first met you in Greece in person. Yeah. And I think sometimes when entrepreneurs get together, they have a lot to talk about. So it’s very easy to talk to you in this unique world that we find ourselves in. But first I wanted to get the story behind fluent CRM.

And the reason why this is really important to you out there watching or listening is. In the learning management system space, you can do a lot with an LMS and a CMS like WordPress, but you need a CRM too, to do more marketing automation, broadcast emails, do more advanced stuff with your contact records.

Can you tell us the story of how Fluent CRM came to be? Okay.

Shahjahan Jewel: So it’s a bit different. It was not intended to be a product actually. We started, selling press plugins back to the 18 and then when we released an update then we had to let our customers know.

That we have an update or, promotional email and those type of things. And first we tried, MailChimp MailChimp is really great, simple. The problem was actually like every time we have a sale, we have to, custom coding or, export the CSV and import those of the thing.

And we are not like marketer, but, we are all the developers. So we, we thought okay, How what can we do? Maybe we can just, have a very simple page where you can just type the subject and the body and hit send, and it will send those emails. So that was like the very fast version.

And, we are using it and, our developers and me too. Added use features like one of the, struggle we had like when someone actually send us an email or give us a support ticket, then actually we had to find, which products they bought or what attributes they have in the other system.

Then then we made a system like, okay, if I search by an email. Or, name, I will get all the details of that user. Then actually it became okay, it’s having shape and then actually work for a year on top of that. Then we see that, okay, this is something that we can actually release as, open source and people can use that.

That’s the behind the story. After, really the first version that was like, pretty fast version. When we released to the public we have a very minimal features and then people actually started using it. Give us, lots of requests. Like I need this integration.

And then actually okay, let’s org on it. We had a very, loans of Fluent CRM. And what we did actually, we reinvested all the money that we got from the loans campaign into it, and then we made it a really big so that’s the backstory of Fluent CRM.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I, one of the things that fascinates me about a WordPress based CRM and email marketing automation is how affordable it is.

As an example, I’ve been using active campaign for a long time. I have a somewhat large email list and the pricing got up to around a thousand dollars a month. And then I reduced the level of the plan I had cause I wasn’t using all the features. And then just this month they raised the price on my plan, another 100.

So it just keeps coming. And I’m like, it’s like you mentioned MailChimp. It’s great. We recommend it. It’s a, it’s got a free, easy way to get started, but once you scale it, it’s challenging. And I find it really impressive with Fluent CRM and a lot of your other tools to how Like fluent support is an example.

I pay help scout a lot of money every month. And I just want to get how you think about that. Cause you’re really disrupting the market in terms of providing in many ways, a more powerful solution at a much cheaper price. How do you think about that and design for that?

Shahjahan Jewel: So in a sense, like actually, we, I never reinvent any wheel or we never invented anything new.

The idea behind, all of our products actually, that is, we want to build products that will help the, small businesses like us or a, a shop owner, or, a creator who is, building a course or selling something like that, and, all those tools that exist.

Okay. So like you, you mentioned like active campaign is great. Like fluency RME is very inspired by ActiveCampaign. We actually used ActiveCampaign for months to understand ActiveCampaign, how the automation work. So we tried to mimic the ActiveCampaign automation into Fluent CRM.

And so our idea is actually, there has lots of tools in SaaS services. And many people actually like us want to use self posted services. They want to reduce the cost. They don’t want to give tax for success. Like when you have 2000 subscriber, MailChimp is free, but when you have 10, 000 subscriber, you are paying hundreds of dollars per month.

So that’s the idea, actually, like all the tools we want to. Build those tools. So it worked in self hosted it, use your server and it was great. It integrated with everything. So like fluency and our idea is actually like when you install that in your WordPress, I know you have say like a lift elements in store, so I will, so all the data of library limits into the same red database.

So I can actually easily, query those data. And when you see a customer, you can actually see who is courses this user enrolled, or I want to see who is my contacts are completed is a course or purchased a course. Those type of things like you are hosting your, e commerce, you are hosting your learning management system in WordPress, but you are, managing your contacts in a another server, another instance.

That’s not a, I think, ideal experience for a business owner, because you have to go back and forth to many places. So that’s our idea is actually like you are managing your, entire online business in WordPress. These tools should be in WordPress. So that’s by personal view about the self hosted open source and everything.

Chris Badgett: I love that. I think we, we think very similarly, like at the beginning of Lifter LMS in WordPress. So this is like in 2013 even the inside of WordPress, you had to get, All these different solutions to create a learning management system, like a separate membership plugin, separate e commerce, separate engagement, gamification stuff.

So we started with this philosophy of how can we just make it easier on the user and kind of consolidate? And I think that. With learning management system websites, almost all of them would benefit from a CRM. Why not have it in WordPress? And that just, it makes a lot of sense. I wanted to ask you a technical question about it.

I get asked this a lot and I’m hoping you can help me I can learn from you on how to answer it better. But when you do like you have a web hosting account, you put WordPress on it, you start adding other tools that send emails, a CRM and email marketing automation tool like FluencyRM, especially if you’re doing a broadcast email.

Can you explain the limitation of just WordPress by itself sending email and then maybe using Fluent CRM as an example, how do you give people the confidence that it’s going to handle the email?

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so this is the, this is our Kind of challenge and not technical challenge, but it’s to educate our users.

It can handle your your server can handle , something like that. So IGA is actually for last couple of years, uh, the, we like many users actually, open support ticket okay, I want like friends CRM, but I’m really afraid that, something will break my email will something will be, will go wrong, something like that.

So only thing I actually like say to customers Look, you are selling your products from your WordPress. You are using WooCommerce. WooCommerce is really big and your server can handle that. You can actually host your email marketing tool this way. And the way we build Fluent CRM.

It very like we had to really do lots of overengineering to build FluentJRM. So something like that, say say you have, you are sending like, 50, 000 emails. And you are getting lots of traffic too. And if a friend said, I’m see that your, server memory is up to 70%, it will stop sending email.

We had to do, lots of background things. If we, if it would be a SAS solution, then we could actually easily, solve this technical challenges from our server because we don’t have any, control over the server. So that’s why we had to do this thing.

So influential and we like this, like we have a very powerful automation. We had to find out what’s the super optimal way we can do that. How we can manage something like we want to run only our code when these things happen. So yeah, definitely that’s like challenging.

Sometimes we find like someone actually sending say 50, 000 emails. And it’s say, they’re saying like, okay, how, why is. Taking one day or 12 hours or 15 hours. Then we had to, explain that when we asked them, we suffer you are using, so maybe they are using a like a shared server, like 5 per month server.

Then we had to explain that okay, you are, managing 50, 000 Contacts you are. sending these emails. So better, at least you are, buy a VPS like 20 per month and host that and you will get the full power and there will be no issue. This type of things like educating the users.

That’s currently challenging, two years ago, the things we, faced about this issue. Now it’s much less. I think more of most of the users are more educated now. There has, lots of good software management tools like they they let you connect your VPS.

So some, so there is lots of things, not like shared server, but there is lots of, new server management tools. They also help the overall ecosystem. I think after a few years, this will not be problem because, the servers are getting more powerful, less expensive.

Yeah, I think it’s a good thing.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, and I think the market is maturing too and realizing the difference between a five dollar a month shared hosting account for a brochure website or a Platform that needs more resources and there’s so many great hosts out there that are Doing better and offering, more resources.

If we look at what I call an education entrepreneur, somebody who’s selling courses and coaching, and if we look at coaching specifically the, there’s the booking element of Hey, I’m ready to book my coaching call with the coach. And I love this one because you’ve basically taken what tools like Calendly or acuity scheduling.

Do but you’ve brought it into WordPress. Tell us about that. Like how the About fluent booking.

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so I am a big fan of Cal. com so we used both cal. com and calendly And then I saw there has no plug in wordpress Like this smooth Calendly or Cal. com, WordPress.

And also we are our marketing team actually planning to do sales call. So our idea was actually when someone actually purchased one of our license, select French CRM, then we will do a sales call. They can just, come to our site and then they will, fill up the form and schedule a call.

And then as I am very much, develop developer mindset and, it’s not actually, I would not say it’s a good thing, but, that’s what I am. So okay let’s, build that build a very minimal version just for our use and we can do that. Then, we the first version we started using it we, and then then we said okay, let’s build this as a project product.

And then we like work like seven, eight months. And, we try to. You can say we are really inspired by cal. com. I really love it I love the company how they operate and they are also like open source. They but they’re you know you need you know, lots of things to set up and everything and So that’s you know, like we built fluent booking And I think you know now, thousands of people are using it.

So it’s good

Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome Another one, and I’m starting to detect a pattern here that, yeah, so you’re scratching your own business problem.

Shahjahan Jewel: actually, like all of our for most of our product, we are the biggest user. A few months ago we released F Boards.

I think we are the, second largest user of that product frameworks like. alternate of, Trello. And so our whole company runs on that in fluent boards as a project management tool. And so fluent support, that’s the same kind of same story. We want to host everything ourself. So when we do, we, we try to find a Open source or paid version of that.

And then we see that if that, what’s for us so the fluent support before print support, we are using, awesome support. It’s a WordPress plugin. We’re using the premium version. The problem is actually they stopped, developing that plugin. So it was like the world is style custom post type thing.

And, our, uh, we could not use those data effectively and as well as it, it just slow for our, support agents. Then we built the fluent support and we tried to optimize that every millisecond level. Like the idea was actually if I, save one second we get like 300, 400 tickets per day and then it will actually help us a lot save time.

So that’s the idea of our products philosophy is actually. We need that. Let’s build it and then make it, sophisticated and then release for the public. And get the feedback as much as possible from the users and all on that.

Chris Badgett: I love that. And just to go over that fluent boards is like Trello, which is project management, which most course creators, coaches, education entrepreneurs need.

And Fluent support is similar to help scout or free scout so that you can manage email with teams and stuff like that, which is super helpful. These are tools we as business owners use every day. What’s your recommendation? Let’s say there’s an, a small business entrepreneur out there. Do you recommend they put it all on one website or have subdomains or how do you?

Like what’s your advice there? We get this question a lot. We see people do both. They like have a site with everything or they move things out. If you could advise, how would you advise?

Shahjahan Jewel: It’s just contextual, right? Different people on to manage different type way, but I can share what I, we do, we host everything in our main domain.

The leisure is actually, like our shop is in our main domain our user account also there. And our support also there, our CRM is also there because if we, I would, host our CRM and subdomain, then it could again got the disconnect connection, right? We could not use all the data, all the events happening in my main store.

If you go to, our store, buy FluentCRM, I can easily actually, run an automation. I can send the welcome email series for you. I can check if you purchased, FluentForms or not. Then I can, send an email about the FluentForms. And, try to educate you about those type of things.

Now I can actually. Easily feature like who is who are our, main top paying customers, which products they’re using. So that’s for that. We use actually everything together in our main domain. So it’s less moving part. So that’s my, personal preference.

That’s how we actually, design these things.

Chris Badgett: I like that. I started with more separate stuff, but over time, they’ve all been coming back to just keep it simple and just get good hosting and you’re good to go.

Shahjahan Jewel: If we, if I need to upgrade my server, I can easily do that. Because even if I do that, all the things in different servers, I had to buy multiple servers, right?

So instead of buy the multiple servers, I can, buy the big server in it and use it. Let’s talk

Chris Badgett: about some of your entrepreneur journey stuff. Did you, a lot of people in our field start as an agency and building sites for clients. Did you do that or no?

Shahjahan Jewel: Okay. Yeah. So that’s the, my story is the same.

I started WordPress back in 2019. So I just started my university graduation engineering. And then, I I started building websites for myself like how to build the website. I had no idea. Okay. So I started with if you want yeah, so there was like blogger.

com was really like blogspot from Google. So that was like really popular. Then I can customize it. How I can, build something that I can customize. So that, I heard about WordPress. And then I, in 2011 I started my first like agency business. In that time mostly we would we are working with, few different, agencies in USA, basically, and USA, one was USA and another one is in health sector.

We were, building the tools for them. So mostly those project or with Laravel and Laravel just started like version three and people started using it we also, loved it the Laravel. And then I kept that business for, I think 17. And after that, then I see that okay. I built many things. I want to now build the product. It’s like the problem was agency business in that time for me you know, lots of projects coming. I am working on a project after three, four, five, six months. I have to move to another project. And then the same story goes every time and when I stop, working like, my revenue stream is not actually that that way it’s not, anywhere.

So that’s, then I realized that, okay let’s try to, build product for WordPress. Because I, in that time, I have a very great experience with WordPress. And that, that then I started, my first plugin was in 2018. And that, that was Ninja Table.

Chris Badgett: That was which one?

Ninja Table. What was Ninja Table?

Shahjahan Jewel: So you say it is a very, it was, so it was another story actually. So in my, agency, I so I was working on a with the bank. And that bank actually, they have to show some data in their office site at the front end was the banker bank’s front end website was and the idea was actually they have some data and they have to, manage that easily and show that in the front end and that need to be very searchable and also mobile friendly.

So then I could not find a, single plugin that can do it in WordPress in that time. So I think that is like 16 or 17, something like that. I built that plugin very simple like you can manage the data in the backend and it will show on the front end. Then actually I from that, I worked a couple of months and then, released us free.

Within just a few months, it got 5, 000 active installation. I was getting like lots of emails. Like I need this feature. I need this feature. And some people email me, okay, I am using this, plugin. I want to donate you. How can I donate you something like that? And then I thought okay, now.

Maybe this can be my first product

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. You have over or somewhere around 110 team members How did you?Let’s look at today Like what percentage like where are the people in terms of like developers designers marketers?

Shahjahan Jewel: Wow. Yeah. So around 30 percent 35 percent are developer. And another 30 percent is marketer.

Then we have support. So we have lots of support people. I think around 20 to 25 percent support. So that’s the distribution. And, I think it got crazy big. I know even I I don’t know how it got crazy big. So I think most of those hires actually happened in the COVID.

So when COVID started, and. We are getting, getting crazy. Like we are having lots of, sales, support, everything. Then actually, so when COVID started, our team members were like 25, 20 or 25. When we reopen our office, then our team members are like 60. And wow, so then, we try to, so another thing is actually like why we are, we have, lots of people the thing is actually like is a product is actually like a startup.

Normally we don’t share resources. So like a developer, we’re working on friends here and he will never work on fluent homes. And so that’s why every product is like a startup and they have a team. So there, those are like cross functional team. So from developer, marketing, and also the support.

And from this three department, we call it a team. And they have a like team lead and he’s the, managing everything. He’s the general manager of that product and he managed all the things when we, release update from the marketing, how we will, market these things, something like that.

And I think that’s why. It got big. If we share the resources, then maybe we would not be that big because same person would handle multiple things. But the problem is actually like when a person actually handle multiple things. Then he get distracted. So sometimes a product, uh, is not getting enough attention.

So we want all the products to be succeed. And so that’s that’s where we are, so many people.

Chris Badgett: So at your current stage, how do you see your role in what you do day to day or monthly,

Shahjahan Jewel: Developer, I told you, like I am, I still try to, code as much as possible, but I don’t get much time to, code.

So that I said, so all the, People are managed by, his team. And in the last couple of years, I tried to build those team. I tried to build those leaders from his, team. And then I, we also have another level that is like department wise. So like from the developer, I have, I have the engineering manager.

From marketing, I have CMO and also for big product, I have like marketing lead of that specific product from support. I have several leads So in the last couple of years, I tried to build this thing. There’s a structure. So even when I normally every year, I, I love traveling. You already know that.

So when I, go to traveling sometimes I, I never, check my emails or I never check my discord channel what people are doing because they are like autonomous, they are, self sufficient. So that’s that was, I think in my entrepreneur yeah, that was the hardest part, to make those structure.

Chris Badgett: Very cool. Very cool. In terms of marketing and growth, And maybe speak in generalities or specific stories, whether somebody is a course creator or any kind of small business owner or a WordPress professional, what have you found in your growth, like some marketing things that tend to work well for WP managing?

So

Shahjahan Jewel: for us the one thing really worked for us and that is word of mouth. Till last year we had zero marketing paid advertisement budget. We never run any ads this year. We are like testing some, ads social media ads, Google ads, those type of thing.

But auto mount, that really helped us a lot. So something like, so think about it. Some like that, week, one of our customer asked a feature for influence CRM and this week we we had a, a schedule, real estate, and then I asked the team, okay, let’s, try to, build that feature and ship it.

And we shipped it. I think several people asked for that feature, Facebook community. And after we release those user was really happy. And I think this type of experience when a customer get from a from a, plugin vendor on something like they never forget those things.

So when someone will ask for a recommendation or something, he will actually say that. Okay, use the friends here and we’re playing forms, something like that. So that helped us a lot. Another thing really helped. And that is from our support we try to, extra mile for a customer.

So sometimes our support engineers actually like to spend several hours to solve a problem. Even it’s not, our support scope and that is something really, helped us. And and when we, give better support and listen to our users communicate very clearly transparent way.

Then actually they purchase, all of our kind of follow up products. We have lots of customers who, purchase more than three products from us and our retention rate is really high.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I love the saying that the best marketing is a good product and that creates, word of mouth.

And then we get that too at Lifter LMS, cause we try hard and support that like people talk about that. It’s a differentiator. Support is literally a feature of the product. So treat it like that. How do you think about growing so fast? And you also just have like, when you release something, I noticed there’s a lot of integrations.

You just seem to have a lot of speed. So tell us about

Shahjahan Jewel: speed. It’s also a, our own power really, poor thing. So all of our way from the very first in WordPress, lots of the, companies or things there has, they, there has a big, very established business model that make really, lots of money for the company and that is tire based pricing, like if you.

Purchase this then you will get certain add ons. If you purchase, higher, you will get all those features. And the starter is that it’s a pro, but it does not have many features. And that’s really helped for a company to make more money. The problem is actually it’s not the, I think it’s very, my personal thing.

Okay. That it’s not a best expense for you. So from the very first from all, for all of our plugins, what we did actually, we don’t lock any feature for different pairs. So like when you actually, like if you, our, flint share and pricing is, it starts with 129. If you purchase on 29, only restriction is actually like you are getting the license for single license.

Someone is purchasing like 499 is agency. You will get like 50 site license. So that’s the only different and we don’t have any add on. When you actually purchase, fluent ceramic install that if you have lifter if you have WooCommerce EDD or any plugin that we have integration that will be automatically activated.

And that’s the, experience I want to give, I want to give the, very frictionless experience for the user. And I think, that is that also help they get better experience. We get less support ticket and yeah, that is we really like core thing.

I know, if we had like tiredness, We could make more money. Maybe our revenue would grow like 30 percent or 40 percent but that’s the this is the path we choose awesome.

Chris Badgett: I heard you say in another interview that Money is not the most important thing to you. So what motivates you?

Shahjahan Jewel: Yes, that’s true so my theory is actually say I am making X amount of money now next year, if I make five X amount of money, my lifestyle will not change.

I like it will not, it’s not like I have to buy a jet or I have a Tesla or something. The lifestyle I am living that’s the, that’s like constant I will do that. So when I had I have not lots of money. Maybe I, I had a level of my lifestyle, but it’s now it’s the like max, I don’t have anything like, I don’t so it’s not something like I cannot do that for money.

So what really motivate actually, like when I get a review, when I get a good word from a customer, or when I go to an org camp, I meet people and. They are excited about my product. They know me, that’s kind of thing like that really, motivate me. So another story is actually, I think, two years ago I got a very good offer.

Someone wanted to, acquire the whole company. And they really offered an amount of money that, I could go to retirement. I don’t have to, work a single day. And then I realized. Say, I am, selling the company, I am going to determine what I will do, what will my deal look like?

And I see that will be really boring. And I can’t, live without the life I am having. I cannot live with the team member I am interacting with every day. So that’s really very important for me. Like I, I want to, do things that I really love every day that make me like alive, feel alive.

Chris Badgett: So yeah. Creators have to create. So be careful with your company. What in this line of thinking and particularly for you with a large organization, how do you think about company culture and staying positive? Cause it’s easy. There’s challenges when you work on the internet, for example you may have some angry, probably every day there’s an angry customer in support or there is.

A team member who’s maybe burning out or having challenges or you’re having challenges in your life or so. You strike me as a positive, optimistic person, but like, how do you shape a culture? That’s, and it’s okay to have bad days and challenges and everything, but how do you think about that?

Cause that really matters in a company.

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, definitely. So yeah, what culture or, environment is really, matter for a company. Or our company, we have very, some core values. So these are values we hold whatever happens, these are super, super important and all of them is actually, we must have to respect each other in our organization.

Orchestrate space. Okay, we have to make sure that it’s really work friendly for everyone. Okay. So that can be, sometimes we get really, very, angry customer from support. And in that case, sometimes I say that our support people, we say that okay, for those customers, assign me those tickets.

And sometimes I had to. Tell my customer like, okay, you are interacting with a human being, so please, if you want, I can, instantly refund you, but please, be social. We are here to help you. Okay. We are not, rob your money or anything. So that’s I try to help my members, I try to understand what my, what my team, what specific team member want what’s their goal, and then I try to help them with their, career wise.

Sometimes, we have, many developer many people in my developer team who started their career support and then they moved to, diff team, and that’s the culture. Anyone can access anyone. So anyone can, come to my, room anytime and ask me a question or anyone can say something.

It’s not like that I say something in my office and everyone must follow that. If someone thinks it’s not the right thing to do, they can definitely, argue that they can definitely tell me that, okay, maybe we can do. This way this is a better way. This is not the best way. So that’s the culture from every step in my office that I I built, and I think that’s very important.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. You’re obviously a visionary and an innovator. Is there anything that you’re you’d like to share about the future or what you’re excited about now, or new products you’re working on or anything like that?

Shahjahan Jewel: Yeah, so yeah, definitely. So we really, invest Almost from the, when we started the company, we always all the money we make profit or revenue.

Most of them actually, goes to reinvestment and I did not, start another business or anything, but within this business. And from to R and D to, hiring more people working on new things, solving problems. We are working with some exciting things and I am really excited for this year.

Yeah, we will have. I think few new product this year. And those are something like really big, like we are working for the last two years for a product. And I am excited.

Chris Badgett: One last question here. How do you think about the small business customer that you’re building for? Who is that person?

And I know it’s you guys so it’s easy. You just scratch what you need, but any other ways you think about that when you’re. Innovating or designing product.

Shahjahan Jewel: When we like building a new product or anything our, ideal persona is actually a small business. So that is a creator.

or someone who has a online shop, who was like, say, you can say maybe the yearly revenue is, a few million dollars 10, 20 people in that team, they’re working something. And that’s when we design something we always think about them can they use them?

And so that’s the thinking we use to design like everything. That’s really help. Like when you have like specific category of the people, like I’m building only for them, then it’s easier to target easier to, create those type of experience.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s Shah Jahan Jewel.

And I want to encourage you to check out WP managed ninja. com that has all the products. But particularly check out Fluent CRM Fluent Booking, Fluent Support, and Fluent Forms for if you’re looking for a form plugin. And it’s a, it’s an honor to catch up with you. I always enjoy our chats and I’m really excited for what you guys are doing and the way you’re doing it in the world.

Keep up the amazing work. We’ll have to do this again down the road. Thanks so much.

Shahjahan Jewel: Thank you.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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