Case Study: Kim Martin

How did I find out about WP Rockstar?

I signed up for GeekWeek and that was last year at the end of September. But how I found out about that GeekWeek? I'm not sure if it was an ad or someone talked about it in a group I was in, but it was definitely.

I don't think I'd ever heard of WP Rockstar before I took part in that GeekWeek. 

And you used to do Squarespace websites, right? 

Yes. And I still do Squarespace websites, but yes, I did use to do Squarespace websites and WordPress just always intimidated me and looked at it before and I just said, oh my gosh, like, it's so not intuitive.

I don't like it. I'm not going to do it.

What was your life like before you complete, you joined WP Rockstar? 

I was a Squarespace designer. I was getting work, some time. Some months I wouldn't build any website, some months I would, so, I mean, my life was fine.

I knew that I wanted to add more, I needed to get more work. Definitely. And so when I saw this GeekWeek come up and I kind of thought, well, I'll take that and see if maybe I want to jump into, WordPress. But, honestly, I didn't expect that I would want to.

I can't even remember now if it was four days or five days, but I just thought, I'll just do this for a few days and then that'll be it. And, I probably won't want to do WordPress at all, but I'm glad I jumped in because my life has changed since I started doing WordPress websites.

Were you a web designer full time before or were you doing this on the side?

Yes, I was, so I was doing Squarespace websites. that was my full time job, although it wasn't really full time because I wasn't getting enough work really, to be full time.

But that was what I was focusing my full time energy on.

What actions did you take as a result of taking the course and being part of the community? 

I signed up for the course. I think it was like the Thursday of GeekWeek, and then, like three days later on the Monday, I signed my first WordPress client.

I actually sort of jumped in and then I haven't actually completed, the WP Rockstar course. I can't even tell you if I've completed any phase of it. 

I started going through it and then I got my first client. And so I was trying to do, that website and then sort of like going through, the course, just trying to figure out what I needed to learn in that moment.

And I always thought, oh, well, like, when I'm done with this website, I will go back to the course and it will go all the way through it. 

And I just I haven't had time to actually go through the whole course yet. I have gone back and and found bits of information that I've needed to complete some websites.

But, I find that what I'm super happy about is the community, the Facebook community that, for me, for Rockstar. 

Because when I do have questions, I can post a question and almost immediately there's an answer. Someone from your team always answers it. But also other people in the community are really good at jumping in, and it's, really, I was going to say close community.

I don't know if close is the right word, but a really, cooperative community and a really helpful community to be in. 

So, I'm really glad that I'm part of that community. 

Have you ever had any contact with coding before or did you feel intimidated by it? 

So years ago, like years and years ago, I took some HTML courses and I knew some basic, basic HTML, but that was kind of it.

And when I tried to, look at WordPress in the past, like it was just I found it intimidating. I found coding intimidating. I found WordPress itself intimidating. I'm a fairly techie person, so usually if I just start playing around with something, I can figure it out more or less.

Like, it doesn't take me long, but WordPress was not like that, so it was very intimidating for me. but once I started taking or once I went through the GeekWeek and then signed up for WP Rockstar, it's not intimidating anymore. 

I mean, there are some things that come up now and I'm like, oh, I don't know if I can do that.

But there's an answer. There's always an answer somewhere, like, I can find it myself. In the course, I can ask the community, I can go online if I want. so it's always figureoutable, but I was really intimidated by it at the beginning. 

And how long did it take you, did it take you to earn backyard enrollment investment? 

It took me three days. I want to say, like, I signed up for the course on the Thursday. And on Monday, I signed my first WordPress client, and that was for more than my enrollment fee.

And that's I've taken other courses before for different things. And, you know, I don't always earn back my investment. It's always a good learning experience. But like hands down this was the quickest I've ever earned back my investment on any program I've ever enrolled in before. 

So yeah, three days, four days, something like that.

And can you talk about this first project that you got after starting the course?

She had a website, but she wanted to just start over, from scratch

So it was a redesign. 

It wasn't like it wasn't the most complicated website like that was. There was no e-commerce or anything like that in there. And it was, pretty much that just, like a portfolio website kind of thing. But it was my first WordPress website. So it was a little bit scary.

And without WP Rockstar, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to actually accept her as a client. 

Like, I probably would have taken the call and then said, no, I'm not the right person for you. But so yeah, so it was like a five-page website. Probably took me longer than it should have to build, but it was my first WordPress and I was really pleased with how it turned out.

My client was thrilled with how it turned out. 

And, she's made a couple of referrals, so I've had a couple other clients because of her as well. So yeah, it was a really good first experience, to build the WordPress website after taking the course.

How did you find this client?

She's local to me, but I found her through Facebook. I'm part of a Facebook group for local business women. There's like, 20,000 people in the group. And I just posted there about my web design experience and my business, and she contacted me through Facebook.

Did you feel supported when going through the course and being part of the community?

Absolutely. I haven't completely gone through the course, but the bits of it that I've done whenever I had questions and like, it's really super quick and easy to get an answer from one of you guys, one of the team, and in the community, the community is so supportive.

One of your team always answers questions and supports each other. But the group itself, like the members in the group, I find that really like everybody really supports each other. I've had really quick responses to questions that I posted, and, when I feel like I can be helpful to someone else who post a question, I try and return the favor by being helpful as well.

But it's probably one of the more supportive communities that I've ever been part of. 

What are your future plans? 

I plan to continue building websites. I'm still doing some Squarespace. I'm doing more WordPress websites now, but I have also enrolled in GeekPack because I want to expand my tech skills.

I find, especially since, starting to build the WordPress websites, I'm finding more people want the help with more connections like connecting their email marketing platforms and just wondering how everything works. 

And so people ask me a question and I'm like - You know, I'd like to know how that works. 

I want to start adding more services onto my web design, and my web development packages.

Eventually, if I get busy enough, I mean, I already find that I'm getting busy now. But I'd like to maybe hire some team members and eventually go the agency route. I'm not sure. 

Right now, even that's kind of a scary idea for me, but, I am starting to think about hiring a couple of team members, in the fairly near future, which is something that I never would have even thought of before.

I always just thought it was just going to be me and I'd be all roles, but yeah, I'm at that place where I'm looking forward to to building a team. 

What would you say to someone who's on the fence about joining WP Rockstar? 

Just do it. Like, if there's any way that you can swing the payment, even if it's monthly payments, if you're interested at all in learning WordPress this is the course to do it. 

It's quite an in-depth course. The whole GeekPack team, WP Rockstar team is incredibly supportive.

I love the teaching style. 

I think the teaching style in GeekWeek was what got me. I really enjoyed Julia and her teaching style and then the teaching style of Shannon and Lydia and everybody else. Like, it's all really not intimidating at all, it's, you know, everybody's learning. We're all learning together.

And it's just it's a really comfortable learning environment. 

I would just say to anybody who wants to who's thinking of joining or on the fence, just, just take the leap, go for it.

I mean, you might end up being like me and signing your first client and four days later having your payment back.

Just go for it.

How’s your experience with The GeekPack Collective been so far? 

I haven't been able to jump in to The GeekPack Collective very much so far because I just have been busy, but I've only been part of it for a month.

I think though, it's just knowing that if there is something that I want to learn or somebody asked me about, like, there's already the answers in there, I don't have to search online to find these things.

I can just go, like inside, inside the community, the GeekPack community, and search for the different topics and, and chances are it's already been covered. 

So I can just sort of hop in and do a training there, or I can go in to go to me at any time and find what I'm looking for. But I'm looking forward to really having a chance when I have some time to dive in and see everything that GeekPack has to offer.

What stood out to you about GeekPack and WP Rockstar?

I think they're both awesome programs. and like I said before, the like Julia and like, the whole team, like, all of you guys are, are supportive. You're down to earth. You're easy to talk to.

You're easy to ask questions to, you know, a lot of us are starting out as beginners. We're never made to feel like a question is stupid. 

Even though I'm sure you guys have heard the same questions over and over and over again. It's never like, oh my God, like, look back in the history before you ask a question… 

Everybody so supportive and there's so much to learn and the way that you guys teach it like it's all broken down into like these bite sized chunks that are easy to to take in, easy to learn, easy to experiment with. 

It's a really good experience to learn from you guys, in WP Rockstar and GeekPack. It's a really good experience, a good community. And I feel really supported.

What is your number one tip for someone who wants to learn a new skill? 

My number one tip for someone who wants to learn a new skill is just figure out how to learn it. Like figure out what it is that you want to learn, and then just find a way to do it.

There's even a free group. There's this group, Screw The Commute, look around in there like around that free Facebook group and find out, what people are talking about, what people are learning about.

But definitely if it's related to tech websites or anything like that, like, definitely look into WP Rockstar or GeekPack. Definitely talk to Julia or, you know, Juliana or, you know, Shannon or Lydia. 

There's so much to learn and this is a great community to learn it from. And so if there's a skill that you're looking for like you'll find it here.

Jump in.