RWL196:Automattic (WordPress.com’s) Director Of Inbound On Navigating His Career w/ Ben Sailer

Alex

0:01

Hey everyone. It's Alex from remote work life. I hope you're doing well, wherever you may be in the world. Have another esteemed guest with me today. I have Ben Taylor, who is director of in-band marketing with WordPresscom. I'm not going to talk through WordPresscom. If you don't know about WordPresscom, please go and have a look. I'm sure you know a little bit about WordPresscom. Ben, thank you so much for joining me today.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

0:30

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on the show.

Alex

0:34

Absolute pleasure. And Ben, well, ben, I knew I wanted to Ben on the show because, again, ben, I obviously do a lot of research into each guest. Ben has a really interesting background, not just where remote work is concerned, but in general, and while I do, I'll leave his details in the show notes. You can see how his career has gone on the incline. But apart from his career, I wanted to know Ben's backstory in terms of why remote work, how his careers evolved. So, Ben, let's just start by finding out a bit more about you. Tell us a bit about you and how you came to be at WordPresscom.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

1:24

Yeah, yeah, so I can start all the way at the beginning. I went to college for journalism and PR, and when I was nearing graduation, I needed to build an online portfolio for myself, and that was how I stumbled upon WordPresscom. And that would have been about 12 or 13 years ago now, since I was first introduced to the WordPress world through WordPresscom, and so I kind of got my start with WordPress just figuring out how to build a portfolio for myself, and then, post-graduation, got into content marketing and SEO through e-commerce. My first career job outside of after graduating was an e-commerce company that sold pickup truck accessories, which actually was a really good experience. It was a great company and since then, wordpress, being a content marketer and an SEO WordPress had been an ever-present part of my career as an end user, and so before I came to automatic and working for WordPresscom, I spent six years at a B2B SaaS company called CoSchedule, which actually started its existence as a WordPress plug-in and then grew into a full-fledged SaaS product, and so that kind of provided a pretty natural bridge, I think, to working for WordPresscom, which has really been an incredible opportunity Definitely a dream role, not one that I ever thought that I would.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

3:47

It's an opportunity that I ever thought I would have, and so I've been here for about a year and a half now and, yeah, it's been great.

Alex

3:58

Yeah, I'm impressed actually because my background is I've done some SEO myself and I have WordPress to thank although the other side of WordPressorg, but I have WordPress to thank for enabling me, with my career, to make a transition into SEO because, like you, I've put online some of the projects that I've been working on using WordPress so that people could see what I was doing and having all those great plugins and I think Colchedule is one of the plugins that I used as well- for content distribution.

Alex

4:40

So, yeah, lots of similarities there as well in terms of the career path, and you mentioned WordPress being a dream role for you as well and another question I want to ask you in terms of the role, of the evolution of your career is different people search for roles in different ways. Some people will use job boards, other people will use their networks, other people will get promoted internally, et cetera, et cetera. What was your method or what was your main go-to in terms of getting your role actually with WordPress and, generally speaking as well?

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

5:26

Yeah, so it might not be the most interesting story. I actually just found the listing through. I saw it posted somewhere online. It might have been LinkedIn or Indeed or one of those types of sites and then I applied and got an offer for an interview and it just kind of went from there. But I'll say, over the course of my career I have learned about opportunities and landed opportunities through a number of different means, and so I feel like with each company that I've worked for and with each career move that I made, it's something I hadn't really thought about before but looking back, that process was a little bit different for each one.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

6:24

So my very first job that I got in the content marketing world, I almost never applied for Because the way the story went, I was pretty desperately job hunting and I was just browsing Craigslist one in the morning for just out of curiosity, just to see, ok, I'm going to do one more search and just check out what's on here.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

7:01

And then I'm going to go to bed and I found this company in my area that I had never heard about before that was advertising, a web content job, and that was something that I had never heard about. I didn't know anything about SEO or content marketing. But when I looked at the description I was like, oh, this actually sounds exactly like what I'm looking for, even though it was describing a bunch of things I had never heard about before. So then I just sent off an application and I was actually living out a state, I was living with my parents and like elsewhere, and I was kind of looking to move back to like the area where I went to college. And so they got back to me like not too long after I applied and then I just bought a one-way ticket, you know, for the interview and I was like well, you know, I don't really want to live at home anymore.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

8:11

So I guess if this doesn't pan out, I'll figure something else out, but but it was nothing.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

8:16

Yeah, yeah yeah, there was no plan B really. So and then it ended up working out and then, after I was there for a couple years, I got a job working at Working at an agency, and the way I got my foot in the door there was they're like director of content ran like a meet-up group locally for for like content marketers and Marketing professionals, and so I regularly went so it's like these a Meetup events, and that was how I got to know like their director of content and so when they had an opening, I Kind of already had like a warm relationship with with them and so that ended up being a Pretty powerful.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

9:15

It was a good in to yeah, to get it to get an interview there and then, after I was there for a little over a year and a half At Koska, joel Garrett moon, the CEO and one of the co-founders, found me on LinkedIn and sent me a message and was like hey, like we're Building some cool things and you know we're looking to hire for a skill set similar to yours and it's just curious if you'd want to take a phone call. And I wasn't really looking to move on, wasn't really sure that I wanted to leave, like like an agency working with, you know, enterprise companies well, a mix of small businesses and enterprise, but it was. It was. It was stable, right. I didn't know if I wanted to leave stability for the startup world or anything like that, but I kind of figured like if the CEO of a company reaches out to you directly, it's a very least you can.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

10:14

You can take a phone call like you've got 30 minutes for a phone call and so, yeah, so I took a call and it took about five minutes for me to be sold on the idea of Applying for that role, and so that was kind of how that whole process started, and then I was there for six years and then, yeah, and then Worked my way up from a content writer to a director level role and yeah, and that was how I got to wordpresscom. So each step along the way, like it's been a little bit different and I think it's interesting because I feel like I hear all kinds of advice. I've heard all kinds of advice about how, like, how do you get your foot in the door and marketing, like how do you move up? Like what's the best way to apply for jobs, and like some people say, like well, excuse me, like, well, don't even bother with, like things like LinkedIn or Indeed, or Like, oh, you have to like know somebody and you have to network.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

11:18

And I would say, like, in my experience, I think there's a lot of different ways that you can get a foot in the door and there's a lot of different ways you can move up and there are a lot of different ways that you can approach, like, a job search and I don't know, like my career definitely hasn't followed a linear path and there was no prescribed playbook that you could follow, you know, necessarily to duplicate all those steps, but I think, if there was, maybe, you know, I think, if there's a common thread between all those experiences, though, I would say that I just really kept an open mind toward new opportunities, put in the work, demonstrated what I could do, and then, you know, I think it ultimately kind of came down to a mix of just being very persistent, doing a lot of networking and not really leaving any stones unturned.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

12:20

You know, when it came to like Just researching where I could find opportunities or ways that I could Meaningfully, you know, connect with the right people who were already doing the types of things that I wanted to be doing, and yeah, so I don't know, I think I've taken kind of a in all of the above strategy that way, and so, yeah, I think I've got a lot of, and so, yeah, I don't know, um, that worked for me, I guess.

Career Growth in Non-Linear Path

Alex

12:51

Yeah, it sounds good. I think, uh, casey nice.

Alex

12:55

I don't know if you've heard of casey nice that yeah yeah, yep, the big, the big youtuber, he, he, um, he kind of extols a similar, you know, way of building a career. I think you made a video where he was talking about you know, it's almost like your, your, your, the way you've used your career is Obviously you're gonna have an overall plan of where you want to get to, but, like you said, it's not always gonna be A linear path to get there. What he says is that sometimes what you're doing is your. It's always like, if you imagine yourself you're in a jungle and you're swinging from vine to vine and a nice vine comes along, you get holding that vine and then another one. It's not going to take you in a straight path, but it's going to take you From a security route, but eventually you'll get there.

Alex

13:41

Uh, get the get in the direction that you want. Um and it's, and as well as that, you're. You're talking about having an open mind, while in terms of Taking phone call from the ceo that you mentioned there, what was it about? Because you mentioned, you know there's something about what he said, or something about the particular company that you like. What was it about the company that you liked which convinced you to sort of learn more about the job and eventually take it.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

14:10

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there was a mix of things, I think. The um. The first concern I had was, like, was whether or not they were growing. You know, like, were they on a positive trajectory? It's, you know, like, most startups don't make it. You know, it's just kind of a fact of life, um, and I think when you enter the startup world you assume a different kind of risk. You know. Then you do when you're um, maybe at a company that's more established, maybe has more of a track record and Maybe a little bit more clear Um, you know outlook for its future, and so that was the first thing that Um, that that he addressed, and then from there, a lot of it was just about, um, the nature of the work itself and you know some of the upsides to working in a startup environment and you know, having the ability to, you know, take more ownership of things and get your hands dirty and move faster and just like, test and iterate and things like that.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

15:17

You know, because there's also a fact of life that when you're an agency, you're, you're kind of a, you're a set of hired hands, um, and a client might pay you for your, your expertise or your, your skills, but, um, you're always working on behalf of somebody else and it's always, um, it's a little bit slower, you're not quite as close to you know, um, as many Things as what you are in a startup, and so, um, and I just kind of like Thought that through when I was like you know what that sounds like a really good opportunity to grow and so I would say that, like again, um, in that situation, and I think in all others throughout my career, every time I've made a move, it was In pursuit of an opportunity to grow, and so it was always a matter of running toward Something rather than running away from something that wasn't working, from something that wasn't working, um, but, yeah, I think, um, it was.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

16:33

The biggest thing was that it was a really good growth opportunity and it was kind of a rare opportunity to, uh, you know, get in pretty close to on the ground floor, you know, with a new company that had a pretty bright future, and, um, you know, that was around, you know, 2015, and so I think content marketing as what we know it today, which is ever changing, you know, was growing into a hotter market than it ever had been before, and it was already a pretty hot market, but it was. There's just so many different factors that kind of came together that you know after it didn't take me long to come all over and just feel like you know it would be silly not to at least apply and see where it goes.

Alex

17:31

Yeah, yeah, and in terms of the, the remote aspects, so obviously wordpresscom was was co-shared, your remote and was that? When did that become consideration for you? Yeah?

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

17:49

That's a good question. So no, co-schedule at the time was not a remote company I think we had when I joined. We had one person who worked remote and then we actually they ended up leaving and then it became a policy actually for a while that there would be no remote hires. And there's a couple reasons for that. One at the time and keep in mind, this was like 2015 2016. Part of the rationale for that was there was a strong belief that people needed to be co-located in you know, one office or in co-schedule's case, we had two offices but everybody worked in one of the two physical spaces. And there was this, this belief that you really needed that for you know collaboration and culture and everything else. And when you have, like a mix of people being co-located or like on site and you know just one or a handful of people remote, like the people who are remote never felt like they were like fully a part of the culture, and so I think there was just kind of a suspicion that it wouldn't really be feasible to retain you know remote workers before that kind of burnout would start to set in.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

19:17

The other part of it, too, is co-schedule is based out of North Dakota, which assuming that not everyone listening to this show, I mean, might not be super familiar with the geography of the United States. North Dakota is a very low population state. It's primarily fairly rural. There's always been opportunities in the technology industry here and there's a lot more now is actually like a pretty impressive amount if you look at it just on like a per capita basis. But the state did not really and does not have like a reputation you know, for being like a technology hub, and when you tell people that you're from North Dakota, like it's pretty common to be met with a certain degree of skepticism, like people be like, like I didn't even know, you had like electricity, like let alone computers.

Remote Work and Company Adaptation

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

20:23

So, which is exaggerating a tiny bit, but I've had versions of that conversation many, many, many times over over the years where it just blows people's mind that you could run a successful startup from a place that you know wasn't New York or San Francisco or Chicago, london, wherever right. And so there was. There was a very strong desire and this is true of every company that I have worked for that was based in North Dakota. There's a very strong desire to kind of show the country and like the and like the world, that we can compete. You know, like we don't need to move, you know to go find opportunities, we'll build opportunities where we're at and we'll prove you. Wrong was very much the attitude, and so that was back then. Now I believe that, like I mean, I haven't been there for about a year and a half and so I can't speak with too much authority on anything that's happening there now. But they have opened themselves up to more remote roles, obviously over, you know, at the peak of the pandemic. Obviously we were all working from home.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

21:47

They're already kind of split between two offices that are a few hours apart. And so I think, just like the, I think that the business world, and particularly like the technology sector, I think, have just changed in such a way, post COVID, that remote work has just become so much more than norm, than it was even a few years ago and they have.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

22:17

I mean, like I said, I don't want to speak on their behalf too much, but I mean I think that they've definitely changed with the times in that regard. And it's you know, once everybody kind of starts hiring remote, you know, like what happens is that for a time, you know there's kind of a there's something to be said for being like a big fish in a small pond right, and so for like a while, like they were pretty able to like very easily attract a lot of the top local talent. But once all of your local talent now has the opportunity to go work for almost whoever they want, you know or not necessarily in the world, but you have, like your, your opportunities have opened up immensely.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

23:15

That becomes less of a competitive advantage, and so I think that probably factors into that decision too. Well, yeah, so that that's kind of the story there. You know, something I think about was like had things been different, like around 2011, 2012,? You know, when I was kind of applying for, like my first job in the industry, I mean, I bought a one way ticket to fly to another state for an interview, you know, and that's just. I can't see anybody doing that now. I wouldn't do that?

Alex

23:54

I doubt it. Yeah, not in this year. It's quite. The situation at the moment certain companies, certain sectors quite volatile, isn't it? That wouldn't I've been hearing. I mean, I know there's, there are people in jobs, there are people you know, companies hiring still, but I think people are a bit more cautious about how they they navigate their, their, their job search and their career. But for sure, yeah, that's the kind, that's the kind of thing I would actually in my day I've been, probably not now. So, yeah, I quite like the idea of buying one way ticket. Yeah, so you're. Where are you located now, ben? Where are you? Where are you calling from the moment, or are you calling me from?

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

24:41

I'm still. I'm in Fargo North Dakota.

Alex

24:45

You're in Fargo, okay, yeah, yeah. What about your team? Where's your team? Because, well, I'm assuming you've got team team across America may potentially where your team based. Mainly, who's on your team?

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

25:00

Yeah, so it's a fairly small team. There's a few of us and we are based, we're split up between, like, fargo, and then Athens, georgia, louisiana, colorado, and I've also worked with a number of freelancers that we've collaborated with who are located all over the world, like different parts of the US. I've worked with freelancers from the UK, nigeria, so, yeah, all over the world. It's, I think, it automatic. We've got employees in, I think it's even 90 or 100 countries or something like that and so.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

25:53

but, like my team is, we're scattered across the US. Yeah.

Alex

25:59

And for you I mean you you're touching on your accessibility has been into roles, or at least the fact that you're in the no-transcript or certain people in the culture is limiting for them in a certain degree, but you've been able to benefit from that. From now working for WordPresscom automatic. How else is that working remotely helped you benefit from you? And second to that, because I know that there are certain people who I've spoken to who previously worked co-located but now working remotely and don't necessarily want to go back to working on a co-located situation. What's your thoughts there? So two questions in one, really.

Remote Work Benefits and Challenges

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

26:49

Yeah, yeah for sure. So I think, for how it's benefited me it's, I mean, it's created opportunities that I would not have had access to unless I was willing to move, which I don't really want to do at this point in my life. So I think that's the biggest thing. It's.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

27:13

You know, if taking a job with a company like automatic and then like it's different with automatic because automatic's always been all remote but if I wanted to take an opportunity with like a lot of companies that I might have considered to be like dream companies, you know, once upon a time, you know as recently as a few years ago that probably would have meant like you've got to move to San Francisco, you got to move to New York, you've got to move to a large, expensive city where you don't know anybody and there's just a lot of trade-offs there that would have been difficult to rationalize, and so I think that's the biggest thing it's you know when you're, you know when the job market isn't so closely tied to geography, you can make different kinds of decisions you know with in terms of how you navigate your career and what opportunities you pursue, and so I think that's probably the biggest thing that I've benefited from.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

28:27

I think beyond that, just there's a lot of things with like flexibility. You know like when you work in a remote and asynchronous environment, if you just need to get things done like you need to go get a haircut, say, or you remember you forgot something at the grocery store and you need to peace out for 15 minutes to go, you know like pick something up or you want to take a break and just like take the dog on a walk or something like that.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

29:03

Like those are all things that you can do when you've got a lot of flexibility in terms of how you structure your workday in a way that can make your workday just kind of better fit with everything else you know that you have going on in your life and so I still keep pretty regular hours because I like having a somewhat traditional structure. But you know it's, I know there are some people that work better early in the morning and so they're up super early like getting their workday started, and some people are night owls and so like I'll get pings from them at like 11pm, you know not that like they expect an immediate response.

Alex

29:49

It's just you've got your notifications on.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

29:55

Yeah, more of what it is is like. When I check my notifications in the morning, I'll see I've got a notification that somebody had to have sent to like 10 or 11pm and it's just because that's when they choose to work, and so that having that kind of flexibility is really nice. In terms of like whether or not I would ever want to go back to like a co located you know type of work environment, I don't think so.

Alex

30:26

Like I don't have any.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

30:28

Yeah, I don't have. Yeah.

Alex

30:33

I don't know no.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

30:36

I never wake up in the morning and just like I wish I could go to an office you know there are, I have, I have like I do like go work from coffee shops and things like that and there's some good co working spaces in my area to that's something else that's like. A nice benefit is like you can just change your scenery every day if you wanted to. So that's good to just to kind of not spend like my whole life in my house.

Alex

31:15

So not that we do that. People think that because you spend the whole, the whole life, you know, in fact you don't even get out of bed. Maybe you got laptop.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

31:24

You laugh when you just the yeah, yeah, right, and just like a coffee maker, like right next to your, like bedside and like, yeah, I think that those, I kind of wish that those stereotypes and cliches would go away. But I don't know, I still like, I'm up pretty early every day, I still make myself presentable. I definitely do not hang out in my pajamas Just doing whatever all day. I guess I would actually go insane Like I couldn't live that way. So I think that is there is like a good point there.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

32:07

I think that for anybody who is considering, you know, for anyone who is considering like switching to the remote work lifestyle, full time you have to know yourself well enough to know whether you can be disciplined enough to just get your stuff done and be reliable and be accountable and not let yourself go. You know, just because you don't have like a physical space where people are going to see you, that you have to go to every day. That's a pretty fundamental thing, like a pretty basic thing that you always hear when people talk about like remote work. But it's really important not to overlook the importance of that. You know, if you kind of see it as an opportunity to, I don't know if you see it as an opportunity that you think you can abuse, you probably shouldn't go for it, yeah definitely, and I like you a bit, like me, in sense that I like to change my scenery and in fact I was at the office of one of my friends just the other day.

Alex

33:24

I was just waiting for him and I was looking around the office and it was. There was music, like really loud music, and I think myself I couldn't as much as I like music in the background I was thinking I couldn't work here because the music would just interrupt me. And then the desks. It was just an open planned office where you have sort of pods, but each pod was face to face and very, very close. You could each person could hear the other person speaking and they had the headsets on but it was very loud. And then the people. It was just completely as far as I could see.

Alex

34:04

It wasn't an environment. That would be me. I mean, it's some people and I love that, like you said, that flexibility of being able to change your environment. If you want to put music on, you can put music on. If you don't want to put music on, if you want to go to a coffee shop, if you want to. You know, work from home, all of these differences, which makes remote work such a benefit to so many people, you know. So that's me. But another question I wanted to ask you as well, because obviously you're managing a remote team, but you're managing on a synchronous basis and there's lots of people trying to figure out how best to do that. I know there's different ways of doing it, but how do you make it work for you and your team?

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

34:49

Yeah, so I think I'm fortunate in the sense that I think because it's automatic has always been a remote company. We have a lot of good tools and infrastructure in place to make it pretty easy.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

35:07

Not to say easy, but we have a lot of processes and things in place that are already existing, that just work really well, and so you know we have I mean, we have Slack, obviously, and then you know like Zoom and Google Meet and things like that that make you know for times that you do need like face-to-face conversation. It's pretty easy, I think, in terms of management, the one thing is, like you have to be, you have to be a little extra diligent about checking in on people, not necessarily in terms of like looking over their virtual shoulder to see what they're working on, but more just to like kind of like see how people are doing, because you can't physically witness someone's struggle. You know, and it's not as easy for somebody In an office.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

36:11

It's really easy to just get up and go talk to somebody and like, obviously, like in an async, like remote environment, it's pretty easy to like reach people on Slack and things like that. But there can be some things that just get lost just in terms of interpersonal communication when you're communicating mostly through text. And so, yeah, you have to you just have to be really proactive, I think, with communication and always over communicate and also be very clear in your communication, because things can come across much, much, much differently in writing than they might, you know, verbally out loud. And so, of course, those are probably the biggest things that I've learned.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

37:04

I think that some of the biggest things that are different about, you know, leading people in a remote environment versus one where you're all in a shared space. I mean the last office I worked at at Coast Schedule, that was an open floor plan too, with the pods, and you know what's pretty typical, you know, for you know, I think, especially for tech companies, that's a pretty typical way out. And yeah, I mean that type of setup has its pros and cons, but you know, one of the pros, you know, like I said, is it's pretty easy to just go grab people and go talk to people you know in a way that and it is in a remote environment too.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

37:49

It's just different. You know the way that you might approach some of those kinds of impromptu, unstructured sort of conversations you know outside of, you know scheduled meetings and things like that. So, yeah, it's, I don't know. It's really important you know that your organization have, like, the right tools and the right processes, the right infrastructure, the right set of shared expectations in place. But if you're fortunate to be in a company that has those things figured out, it's mostly just on you, just to, you know, be proactive and maybe a little bit more proactive than what you might have been used to before.

Alex

38:37

Yeah, and, like you were saying, you've got the infrastructure is there. They've been remote from day one, so you know you've got foundation in place, which does help. I guess it does help quite a lot, whereas the company is trying to work things out still as they go along, which is never ideal. What about you as well, ben? What are you? Because it sounds like you've got your work on some like exciting things with WordPress. What are you excited for? I guess for the future. What does the future look like?

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

39:14

Yeah, you know, I think the biggest thing, I think, at WordPresscom, I think we have an incredible amount of opportunity in front of us, I think, to really change people's perception of what WordPresscom is and what we can offer to people. There's still, I mean, and I see this and I hear this I think there's still, I think that the strengths of our offerings are not, as they're not, as well understood as what they could be, I think, both within, like the WordPress community and, I think, more broadly, which is people who use WordPress. You know it's still pretty common in the year and a half that I've been working here, it's whenever I like run into people, like wherever, or I'm talking to friends or family or whoever's like, asking like, oh so, like, what do you do? When I say WordPresscom? It's very, very rare for anybody to understand the difference between WordPresscom versus WordPressorg. And then when people do here, for people who are, like, maybe somewhat familiar with WordPresscom, have a very limited, very outdated understanding of what WordPresscom is and what we can offer as a managed hosting provider, and so that's kind of like the core challenge, I think, for us marketing-wise right now. But the sky's the limit.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

41:02

You know, I think, what's most exciting to me about working at automatic and working for WordPresscom specifically, is there's not much of a ceiling that can be placed on what we can achieve and when your potential is. I don't know if this sounds cliched, but when it's like it's actually almost limitless, you know, in practical terms, you know, I think what's exciting about that to me is like we'll never be done, you know, and I think, on top of that too, just the. Something else that's exciting to me is having the opportunity to work with an organization that has, that makes such a wide global impact, you know, like on the world, you know, on the internet in general, you know on, you know, and that just has like a very strong, like mission and set of values that really resonate pretty deeply with me personally. And you know, there's a lot of things about the, the open source ethic and advocating for the well-being of the open web. That I think, especially right now, with a lot of things that are going on, that's that's very motivating and it's yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, it's not an opportunity I ever thought I'd have, you know, but but here I am, so I'm just excited to get the chance to make the most of it and see what what kind of dent I can, I can make in the world. But yeah, Pretty significant.

Alex

42:55

Yeah, I think you'll make. You are and will make a significant debt, like you said. I think as much as I'm on the I start with WordPresscom but I'm on a WordPressorg side of things now but ethics and the values you know are there and I think that's why I've stuck with WordPress for such a long time. Open source element as well as a big thing for me, and just the flexibility, the the community around it as well. I think that's it's really kept me, kept me involved with WordPresscom too. So it's good to hear that.

Gratitude and Networking Opportunities

Alex

43:27

You know it's not just, it's also within the actual workings of how you work as well, and, yeah, it's it's. I'm like you, the ethic and the values of whoever I work for always important to me as well. So, love that, I love that. But it's been enlightening, it's been really interesting. I mean, I've got as ever. I've got so many more questions. I love to ask you, but I know you're busy. Have a busy day ahead as well. I just want to say thank you for for joining the podcast. We'll be keeping an eye out for where things take you next and I just want to wish you all the best going forward.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

44:03

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This has been a great conversation. It's definitely an honor to be invited to come on the show and, yeah, I really appreciate this opportunity and all the support. And, yeah, if anybody listening to this episode, if they have any questions or just want to reach out, I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. So, yeah, definitely feel feel free to get in touch.

Alex

44:33

That's really good, because I think it's nice to know that you're opening that channel, because I think there are lots of people that may have, not just from the podcast, but it's good to know. That is that condition. So what I'll do is I'll leave your your details in the show notes, but no, ben Steyler, director of Inbound Marketing for WordPresscom. It's been great to speak to you, thank you.

Ben Sailer (Automattic)

44:58

Yeah, thank you as well.

Alex

45:00

Thanks everyone.