#167 – Bud Kraus on Podcasting and Finding Inspiration in WordPress Stories

Transcript

[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, podcasting and finding inspiration in WordPress stories.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today we have Bud Kraus.

Bud’s name might ring a bell in the WordPress community, not only for his teaching and writing, but also as the host of the Seriously, BUD? Podcast.

Bud’s WordPress journey started back in 2009 when a client told him he had to learn WordPress, and ever since he’s been immersed in all aspects of it. From building sites to teaching, to creating content for major WordPress businesses. These days, Bud calls himself a WordPress content creative, focusing mainly on producing articles, videos, and of course, his own podcast.

In this episode, we turn the microphone around on Bud to talk about his transition from site building to content creation. He shares how the Seriously BUD? podcast came out of a desire to have real, unscripted conversations with people from around the WordPress community. Chats that go beyond plugins and code and dig into the stories, quirks and lives of the people behind the tech.

We talk about the format of the show, Bud’s technique for bringing out interesting stories, and the importance of really listening to guests. Bud explains his approach to podcast technology, why he thinks the tech stack doesn’t have to be intimidating or expensive, and he also offers insights into the editing process that makes his interviews come alive.

Towards the end, Bud shares his thoughts on the future of podcasting. Why it’s still such an appealing medium, and what it takes to keep a show fresh and enjoyable for the long haul.

If you’re curious about podcasting, interested in the art of conversation, or are thinking about starting your own show, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast. Where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Bud Kraus.

I am joined on the podcast by Bud Kraus. Hello.

[00:03:12] Bud Kraus: Hi, Nathan. How are you?

[00:03:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, very good. Nice to chat with you. The tables are turned because not that many weeks ago I appeared on your podcast, which is going to be the focus of this podcast today. So it’s kind of inception, WordPress Podcast inception.

[00:03:27] Bud Kraus: You know, podcasting is getting very incestuous. I mean, everybody’s on everybody’s show. It’s more convoluted than the Hapsburg Empire. I mean, it really is.

[00:03:36] Nathan Wrigley: That’s a description. I like it. Before we begin and start to explore your podcast, why you did it and so on, let’s just get into who you are. So a couple of minutes, really, your potted bio. Tell us anything that you like. This is obviously a WordPress podcast, so centering it around your WordPress journey would probably be ideal. So, couple of minutes, over to you.

[00:03:54] Bud Kraus: Alright. Well, I have a little elevator speech on this, or a little longer than an elevator. But in 2009 I had a friend client who sat me down at the Oyster Bar in New York City and said, you know, you really need to learn WordPress. And I said, no, I’m a Rage Against the Machine kind of guy.

And then he got very serious and then I started to learn. And once I learned that you could make a child theme and what that was all about, you know, I was hooked. And then I started teaching WordPress at FIT in New York City and everywhere. I was just teaching like crazy. And I was making websites, and eventually I got to hate making websites because I just wanted to do it my way, not the client’s way. That’s not really a good attitude.

And eventually in the last couple of years, I’ve really gotten into creating WordPress content for WordPress businesses. So I call myself a WordPress content creative. That also includes, of course, podcasting and my show Seriously, BUD? So that’s it.

[00:04:44] Nathan Wrigley: So are you still working with WordPress in any way, shape, or form for other people, or is it primarily just for yourself now?

[00:04:51] Bud Kraus: I try not to, unless you beg me. Now, occasionally, no, I do have a couple of sites that I do updates for. I could get rid of that business. It’s not really much, but I just like doing it and I like the people and so, you know, I do it. But I have my own two sites, joyofwp.com and seriouslybud.com. And I am the client, so I get to decide everything and that’s what I like about it.

So yes, I don’t want to stop doing WordPress, okay, the site stuff, because it will diminish my ability to write and create WordPress content, but I don’t want to get paid to do it for clients.

[00:05:27] Nathan Wrigley: And was the intuition to move into content, was that purposeful? In other words, did you sit yourself down and say, do you know what? I’m fed up of doing the client thing, I want to stay in the WordPress space, so what can I do? Well, content seems like a good thing. Or was it more an evolution where you just wrote a few pieces and discovered that you enjoyed that?

[00:05:44] Bud Kraus: Well, I am not that smart. The first way to do it, like to think logically I should be doing this, I don’t go that way. So, Vikas Singhal from in InstaWP got me really on this track a couple years ago when we first met online. And he said, why don’t you create a video for me on security? I said, okay. And I did.

And then I started doing some other things, and then Marcus Burnette said, why don’t you write articles for GoDaddy? And I started doing that. And I said, you know, I have written articles before, but I never got paid for it. And I thought like, you actually can get paid to create WordPress content. No way.

So that turned into, now I write for Hostinger on a regular basis. I write for Kinsta on a regular basis. And I could write for, name it, okay. But that’s not, the problem is I can only, you know, one person and I’m not interested in cloning myself and making myself into a content agency. And so this is it.

And the podcast, well, we’ll get into that. But I wish I were smart enough to plan. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. That’s just the way it is.

[00:06:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think the same is true for me. I was building client websites and straight into, I mean, all I do basically is create podcasts. I’ve never written much. I don’t really have the capacity to overcome the blank page at the beginning. But I stumbled into podcasting and it slowly became what I did.

And there was never an intention there. It surprised me that the WordPress ecosystem is actually big enough that that kind of thing is possible. Now, if everybody in the WordPress space decided to make a podcast, both you and I would be sunk.

[00:07:22] Bud Kraus: Wait a minute. Pardon for the interruption, but doesn’t everybody in the WordPress space have a podcast. Where are you going with this?

[00:07:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it does definitely sometimes feel that way. But if everybody did it, then we’d all be sunk. But the fact of the matter is, there are literally millions of people out there using WordPress. And so there’s a niche within a niche. You know, you can find, I don’t know, maybe you do a security podcast in the WordPress space or a community podcast or what have you.

You’ve settled on, Seriously, BUD? Tell us what that is then, and how you’ve settled on that format? And what is the format?

[00:07:55] Bud Kraus: Well, the idea came in an instant. This was after years of saying to Bob Dunn, you know, I will never make a podcast. What are you doing podcasts for? This is the most ridiculous thing. Why does anybody ever make a podcast? So I was not looking to do this.

But I was in an Uber leaving WordCamp US 2023 in Washington. I’m telling you, like a lightning bolt, this thing hit my head and it went like this. You know, I wish I could spend more time with Nathan Wrigley. I just got to wave at him and like say hi, and that was about it. But boy, I’d certainly like to know about his childhood, his life, whatever, I’d like to spend more time, and have a conversation about his life.

And in that instant, the show was born. Now, it wasn’t called Seriously, BUD? Right away it was called In Conversation With, but that’s such a boring subject title. But I knew right from the get go that this is what I wanted to do. And I also said, I don’t care if I ever get sponsors. Now I do. I don’t care if I ever get listeners. Now I do. But I just wanted to do it for myself because, you know, it was like, what do they say, scratch an itch or whatever it is. Itch a scratch or scratch an itch.

So that was it. And about four or five months later, I did my first episode with Marcus. And it’s been every Friday at eight o’clock in the morning, in Eastern Standard time, a new episode comes out and I’ve, I don’t miss. The really cool thing is that the stories are phenomenal. I mean, there is a certain, similarities between people, there definitely is and I can write a book now about the WordPress community.

And I’m also, you know, the purpose of the show too is not just to satisfy me, but to give people an opportunity to tell their stories. And not surprisingly, people like to talk about themselves. You know, so my job is sort of, let them do that, get out of the way, hopefully get them to say something that they don’t really want to say. It’s just been really, it’s taken over my life.

[00:09:47] Nathan Wrigley: Have you always been, how to describe it, a raconteur? Have you always been the kind of character that can fill a silence? Or is this something that you’ve had to develop and get out of your comfort zone a little bit?

[00:09:59] Bud Kraus: No. I’ve always been pretty good at talking to people. And I really started to realise that, or sort of got into that, I took this train trip around the United States in 2018. I was gone for 19 days, went all the way around the country, and I basically would interview people. Now, you know, I didn’t record much, but I would just go around and say, when you’re on a train for that long a period of time, you get to talk to people.

And I started realising, my God, everybody I’m talking to has the most unbelievable story. It wasn’t like right from there, I went from that to WordPress, to my podcast. But I, you know, in a very gradual process, I started to realise that I like doing this. And the other thing is I love radio and the spoken word, and I think you do too. Most people who are in podcasting are sort of like frustrated radio personalities or whatever. I don’t feel that’s what I am, but I’ve always listened to talk radio ever since I was a little kid so, yeah, it all fits together.

[00:10:56] Nathan Wrigley: I feel there is a certain skill if you are going to do interviews as you do, and it, I guess it’s more of a conversation what you have. I think most of content that I create is more of an interview where the person comes and I ask a series of questions, which hopefully elicit responses.

But I think there is a certain character trait about that. You know, the ability to ask questions and then sit back and listen. And that is one of the things that I discovered at the beginning was the most important skill is not necessarily the question, it’s the listening. Which sounds a bit the wrong way round. But if you’re not listening to each reply as it comes out the guest’s mouth, then the follow-up question is basically, you’re just following a proforma.

Okay, I’m going to ask this question, and then whatever comes out of their mouth when they finish saying that, I’ll go to this question. And that, for me, has never really worked. It’s been more a case of, okay, be quiet Nathan, listen to the reply, and then hopefully the conversation will flow, because a question that you didn’t anticipate will come out of your mouth. And so I wondered if that was a part that you’ve discovered as well as I did, that listening is equally important.

[00:12:03] Bud Kraus: It’s probably more important now. You know, it reminds me, in fourth grade, I had a music teacher that said, it’s not the note you’re playing, it’s the next note. And that’s very much like what you’re talking about, which is you’re listening and you’re figuring out, and it’s hard. It’s not that simple, because you’re listening to what they’re saying, but you’re also thinking, what’s going to be my follow up question? What’s the natural flow of the conversation?

You know, and if you’re really good at it, you’re not really thinking that way. It just flows natural, you know? So if they say something, I think the first thing you need is curiosity. Where did that come from? Or, why did you do that? Or, how come you didn’t do this? And in fact, we’re releasing a book, an ebook now called Questions I Wish I Had Asked. And I have five people who have answered each one, their own question that I should have asked them, or I forgot.

So when it comes to this kind of stuff, you can build like a little empire with eBooks and blogs and this, you know, it’s just amazing what can grow out of a podcast.

[00:12:55] Nathan Wrigley: I make sure that all of the guests have access to some sort of shared show notes, so that if I have a series of questions, at least they can be prepared. But also my weapon of choice is what you can now see, but the people listening to this can’t. It’s basically a pen and a piece of paper. When something during the course of our conversation occurs to me, I know that my job is to not interrupt you with that moment’s thought, but I just scribble it down and then when you’ve finished, see if that’s where the journey takes me. But it might be that something else comes along. So yeah, it’s kind of interesting.

I think we’re both very lucky though, in that we are in the technology space, and WordPress in particular is this perfect medium for getting a podcast out into the real world. Because I feel that for a lot of people, that’s another hurdle that they’ve got to go through. Okay, I want to make a podcast. How do I do that? Where do I put it? How do I get a website, and all of that? And so, what do you feel about that? Do you feel that you’re in a, you know, a lucky position that you knew WordPress when you started out this whole thing?

[00:13:55] Bud Kraus: Yeah, but I didn’t really launch with a website. I launched just by learning the software, Descript and SquadCast and the Riverside and this and that, you know? Because I didn’t know any of this. And, you know, some people were giving me, why don’t you check this, check that? And eventually I came up with my podcast stack. How do you like that?

But then after I had a couple episodes out, I thought like, you know, I should have a website. And then that came along. And of course that’s easy because, you know, we both know WordPress, so that part’s done.

Yeah, you’re right. I mean, we’re lucky also that we’re in a community who is technologically savvy and will listen to podcasts. And so that’s another thing that’s also fortunate that there are many corporate sponsors of WordPress podcasts. Although I don’t consider myself a WordPress podcast, but you know, I guess I am.

[00:14:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess the people that you’re interviewing are definitely bound to that subject, but you are very often not dealing with WordPress too much during the conversations, which is I think kind of nice. And we’ll get onto that in a minute.

But, do you mind if I obsess about the tech stack there? Because it may be that there’s people listening to this who have listened to this podcast and it just comes out of their phone or it comes out of their speakers, and they’ve never really thought too much about the bits and pieces that go on in the background. So let’s just share our similarities and differences there. What would you say is the tech stack that you’ve got? What are the three or four things which are essential that you’ve learned?

[00:15:16] Bud Kraus: Well, I start with SquadCast for the recording. And I’m not an expert on this because I’m still new at this and I don’t, you know, I haven’t used, I’ve experimented a little bit with Riverside, and I know there’s a whole bunch of other ones and free ones and this one, but SquadCast, you pay a little bit of money, so what. And I think it’s really good. You can do audio, you can do video, you can do all kinds of stuff. And then I use Descript to do the editing.

And you know, everybody has a different workflow. I will use the timeline, I will use the text-based editing. I’ll do it my way, you’ll do it your way. It’s always kind of interesting to learn how people use these tools in different ways. And then after the show is edited, and personally I find the editing to be the best part of the show, which is really, you know, you think talking to the people. Well, that’s fun but, you know, Nathan, going back to what you were talking about, about listening, I don’t really hear the show until I start editing.

That’s the first time I really hear it, because I’m not concentrating on the questions. I’m now focused on what the guest had to say. And then it’s a very creative process. Do you want to shorten the gaps between pauses? Do you want to take out all the ums, sos, you knows, all that stuff? You know, all those words that, the filler words, or do you want to let it fly? Do the Rob Cairn’s approach, no editing. There’s different ways of doing this.

I am more of a particular on the editing. I like to really clean things up and cut things out, especially if it’s me talking. I did this episode with Jeff Chandler where we went on and on and on about sports. That all got ripped out because like, come on, we’re both from Cleveland, Ohio. So you know, we start talking about Cleveland sports, get rid of this, no one’s going to listen. So I try to think of like the audience too.

But anyway, the editing is the most fun. A little tedious, but I think the most interesting part. And when it’s all done, then I run the file through, what did he take? It was a, I forgot what it’s called. Anyway, I run it through like a cleaner and then I published it to Buzzsprout, which seems to be doing a very good job publishing and putting it on all these platforms.

Because you don’t want, you need to have a podcast distribution service. You can’t go to all these different services and do it yourself. So it’s kind of, you know, it was sort of, because I had an understanding of technology and how things worked. The learning curve wasn’t too bad. It was pretty easy actually, when you think about it.

[00:17:37] Nathan Wrigley: I think when I started, I think I started in 2016 or something, it was definitely, it wasn’t difficult at that point. Many of the hurdles have been overcome, but it’s certainly easier now. When I did it, I began with Skype, which has just died actually, or at least Microsoft have said they’re going to kill it off.

I bought an app which would go on the Mac, and then that would record. But there was no clever sort of software like you described. We’re using now SquadCast, which is basically, you open it in the browser, send a link to somebody, and so long as they’ve got access to the internet and a microphone, we are good to go.

And it’ll record everything in separate isolated tracks. And then, as you said, both of us will throw it into Descript, which is a piece of software, it’s actually available in the browser, but you can also download it as app. And you can do all sorts. It’s amazing what it can do actually. It will bind the transcript that it creates to the timeline. And so you can delete portions of text by highlighting as if you’re in a Google Doc or something like that, so delete sentences and what have you. And it’s really sublime. So it’s much, much more straightforward.

But I’m, a bit like you, I’ve really enjoyed the editing experience because you can fiddle with it, can’t you? And you can decide which bits stay on the edit room floor and which bits go in, and sometimes you go off on different tangents. But the other side of it, that’s the software side. What are you using to actually record the audio? So microphones and computers and any of that.

[00:18:59] Bud Kraus: Okay, well, thank you Omnisend, my first sponsor. I have to get that in there, because they bought me, they said, we don’t want you using that crummy microphone anymore. Go out and buy yourself a nice microphone. Which is, it’s the same thing that you’re using. What is it?

[00:19:11] Nathan Wrigley: It’s a Shure MV7.

[00:19:13] Bud Kraus: Yes. And I really like it a lot. I have it on my desktop. I have a desktop stand for it. I have a hard time doing a boom microphone. So it’s a desktop, and it’s nice. But you know, you don’t need, I think a lot of people know, you don’t need a lot of heavy investment to do a podcast. It’s almost, talk about a barrier to entry being nothing or next to nothing. Podcasting certainly is that.

[00:19:35] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, you really, really need very little. You and I have got this modestly priced mic. It’s not the top tier and it certainly isn’t the bottom tier. But when I began, for probably four or five years, I had a really cheap mic. And it’s about where you position it and how far away you are from it and refining all of that and, you know, not breathing too heavily over it and different bits and pieces.

But the barrier to entry really is, if you’ve got a phone, you’ve got everything that you need, because it’s got its own microphone built in, it’ll do a credible job. The audio software will kind of clean it up nicely. And the website, the WordPressy bit is icing on the cake. If you really wanted to keep it cheap and cheerful, Google’s YouTube will suffice. Really, you could just upload it to YouTube and they now offer podcast as an option. It doesn’t have to be a video. Well, it needs to be a video, but it doesn’t have to actually be a picture of you and your guest or anything like that.

[00:20:28] Bud Kraus: I upload, I mean I know I’m interrupting you, but I have a question. So, where do you think the future of all this podcasting is going? I mean, what’s podcasting going to be like in a couple of years, according to you?

[00:20:38] Nathan Wrigley: I will give you the answer to that in about.

[00:20:40] Bud Kraus: I’m sorry for interrupting.

[00:20:41] Nathan Wrigley: No, no it’s fine. I will give you the answer to that in a few weeks time. I’m going to, one of the biggest podcast shows in the world is held in London every May. I’m going to be going to that. 10,000 attendees. You know, I’m in this little WordPress bubble of podcasting, but it’s an absolutely gigantic industry. It’s occupying one of the biggest convention spaces in the UK in London, in Islington, if you’re a person that knows London. I will give you more of an answer then because it’ll be interesting to see what the trends are.

However, we did have a bit of a bump in credibility in podcasting for a while, and then I think it plateaued a little bit or perhaps went down. But more recently, I think it’s been going up again.

The reason I think it remains popular is the same reason that talk radio hasn’t gone away, is because you can really get into the subject matter. If you’re really into WordPress, then there’s a bunch of WordPress things, or if you’re into, I don’t know, skiing, there’ll be skiing podcast and what have you. And the crucial bit for me is that you can do other things at the same time.

[00:21:43] Bud Kraus: Well, that’s where I was going to go too, which is talk about a mobile media. You could take it wherever you go. You don’t have to sit at a computer or anything, it’s in your headphones.

[00:21:52] Nathan Wrigley: If you’re stuck in your own house, you know, just doing chores, it can be done at the same time. And even things like mowing the lawn, which is typically quite loud and probably would’ve gotten in the way, the noise canceling headphones that you can have nowadays. And for me, basically, when I’m not doing something which requires my eyes to be on something, if I’m alone and I’ve got nothing else to do, you can more or less guarantee that I will have a podcast plugged into my headphones.

[00:22:19] Bud Kraus: Well, you know, this is the perfect medium for the legally blind. I ought to know, I’m speaking from experience here, but it is, it’s all ears.

[00:22:27] Nathan Wrigley: So, I don’t know. I don’t really have an intuition about where it’s going to go, but I don’t see any signs of it as a medium going away. Because I think we all love to listen, well, not all of us, but many of us really enjoy listening to other people and their stories, and their trials and their tribulations and their expertise and whatever it may be. I think it’s going to stick around

[00:22:50] Bud Kraus: Now, you’re so lucky because you have those golden pipes, I have nothing. I have this old man’s voice. God, I would do anything like if AI could clean me up and make me sound like you, I know it could. That gives me an idea.

[00:23:02] Nathan Wrigley: You’re very kind. I’m not sure you’ve captured entirely what my.

[00:23:06] Bud Kraus: Oh no, I remember, whoa, hold on a second. I first saw you and heard your voice when you were doing the agency summit and you’re doing all those intros. I don’t know how long ago was that?

[00:23:15] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, probably about, I don’t know, 7 years or something like that, yeah.

[00:23:18] Bud Kraus: Yeah. And I was listening. I go, oh, I’d like to. Who’s this guy with a voice?

[00:23:22] Nathan Wrigley: You know we talked about editing bits out.

[00:23:25] Bud Kraus: That’s going to be edited out. Don’t you dare. You better not or you’ll be hearing from me.

[00:23:30] Nathan Wrigley: We’ll see. We’ll see if it makes it. Okay, let’s, dig into your podcast. We’ve talked a lot about how we go about making podcasts. What is the plan? What do you do during that podcast? Yeah, just tell us what you do on typical episode and what are you trying to achieve there.

[00:23:44] Bud Kraus: Okay. Well, I’m trying to get an unexpected conversation. I always say it’s an unexpected conversation of so and so in the WordPress community. What I do is a guest first has to come to my site and fill out a form, which everybody says is ridiculously long. And I mean, you know, I ask about like almost, every question I could think of. What’s your blood type? Things like that.

And then I, before the show starts, I really don’t do any prep, very little. But before the show starts, I’ll look at what you submitted, I’ll look for a question, my first question, whatever it is. And it’s not going to be like, where were you born? Okay. It’s going to be like how come you like to smoke or something, you know? What’s that? It’ll be something like that.

Off we go. The show does not follow a linear progression, because that’s, I look at it like if I’m talking to you like at a bar or something like that. I’m not going to start from the beginning of your life and go to the end. I’m going to go back and forth and whatever. It’s just going to be, it’s sort of like a show about nothing, you know?

[00:24:35] Nathan Wrigley: It’s like the Seinfeld of podcasts.

[00:24:38] Bud Kraus: Right, and it works. Seinfeld worked. So I figured maybe this will work. So it goes back and forth and I try not to talk too much about WordPress. Usually I’ll say something like, okay, let’s talk about WordPress. You know, what do you do? And then if I feel like the guest is talking about anything, I’ll just jump in and go, okay, that’s enough of that, and we’ll go on to something else. When you’re in real life, at least for me, I’m rude enough to say to somebody, okay, enough, let’s go on.

[00:25:01] Nathan Wrigley: So the intention then is to sort of figure out the personality behind the thing. So let’s say, for example, it’s somebody that we’ve all heard of in the WordPress space, they’ve got a thing, we’re all familiar with the thing that they’ve got. Okay, we know that about them. That’s a given. So your idea is to drill in and figure out, okay, just tell us something quirky and interesting about you, your life, and let’s talk about that.

[00:25:23] Bud Kraus: Yeah, I mean, I try to ask like crazy questions to elicit some unusual, crazy response. And sometimes it happens, you know? Sometimes it does and sometimes it does. A couple of things. one I find the older you are, the more interesting you are to me, because you’ve lived a life. I don’t have anything against 25 year olds. I’ve had them on the show, but they don’t have the breadth of time that I’m looking for. That’s one thing.

And the other thing is some of the people I know very well, and some of the people I don’t know at all. I think Brian Gardner, I didn’t know Brian, and I had a great time talking, you know? or Andrew Palmer, wow, those were so much fun. So it isn’t necessarily. In fact, to me, those are the best episodes when I don’t know the person, because I just, I’m more inquisitive.

[00:26:07] Nathan Wrigley: How do you handle, or maybe you’ve not had one yet, how do you handle the guest who is not quite as talkative as you’d hoped for?

[00:26:16] Bud Kraus: Boy, that’s a good question. I’ve had a few of those. I just do the best I can. You know, I mean, everybody’s a little different. You know, the other thing too is I do interviews with people that English is not their first language, and you’ve got to keep that in mind. You’ve got to give them the space to go slow, let them talk, and then do a lot of editing.

Because what they tend to do is have what I call warmup words, where they’ll say the, the, the, the, and I don’t want four the’s, one is enough, So I’ll cut out the three the’s. That’s very typical of somebody where English is not the native language, because they’re thinking of how to say something. And I don’t necessarily think that makes for a good listening experience. So out it goes, and then they sound really good. You know, and I can think of a whole lot of people that, you know, I’d made them sound a whole lot better.

Now, I want to tell you another little quirky thing about the show. I always think like, well, when I do Nathan Wrigley, which I’ve done, right? wow, everybody’s going to be listening to that episode, you know? Because he’s so well known. Now this is not necessarily you Nathan, but it doesn’t work that way. It does not work that way. At the end of the day, I’ve realised I don’t know how many people listen to an episode, there’s so many factors. But one of them is not how well known they are. That is not a factor. Contrary to Bob Dunn, who when I first started this, he said, well, if they know the person, if people are really well known, then everybody will listen to that episode. Not true.

[00:27:41] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I guess maybe there’s that whole thing, who would listen to a podcast with me on it, because they can always listen to podcast with me on it, because that’s what I do. So yeah, that makes sense. And also, if you’ve heard from them, whoever the guest may be in a thousand different places, then yeah, I can understand that.

[00:27:57] Bud Kraus: It turned out to be sort of like the lesser known people, if you will. They get more plays. It’s just that people are just more curious. You know, they maybe they’ve heard of that person and they’re a little more curious.

Or, here’s the other thing that really increases. If so and so, let’s say it’s somebody in India or Australia or whatever, you know If they wanted to share this with their family and their friends, I see a lot of that kind of stuff going on. You get a lot of plays. So I look at, my podcast as not a WordPress podcast per se, and that’s why I think it has legs and, potential beyond the WordPress world.

[00:28:28] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that was another question I was going to ask. Because you’re not really bound by anything other than, here’s a human being who can speak, and they’ve got a story to tell in some way, or at least we’ll try and pull a story out of them. I was going to ask if you were going to expand it beyond WordPress and just see where it leads you.

[00:28:43] Bud Kraus: I have no interest, but I have people coming, friends and stuff, will you interview me and stuff? No, I’m not interested. I don’t have time for that kind of stuff, There’s enough fascinating people in the WordPress world, and it’s definitely a way for people to get to know other people in the WordPress, see that’s, you know, it’s a platform. So that they can get to know you, me, whoever it is, beyond the typical, what’s your WordPress journey stuff, or what do you do with WordPress? It’s the story. It’s the person. It’s the biography.

[00:29:09] Nathan Wrigley: Have you ever had episodes that you were not able to get something that you’d hoped out of it? So in other words, you pressed record and then by the time you’d finished the episode, you thought, oh gosh, that didn’t work out as anticipated, or that just went off the rails, or there was nothing of interest there. Let’s can that one and either retry it or just bin it.

[00:29:30] Bud Kraus: Well, I’ve had two, one episode that the interviewee said, I don’t want you to air this, so, okay, I didn’t. And then another one said, there was a whole thing about something that this person said, I had it cut out because this person did not want me to air it. So I did. But for the most part, no. Now some of them I get off and I go, wow, that was really great. I do have that, like, whoa, what a story. And then sometimes it’s just okay, it didn’t go anywhere, or I thought it’d be better or whatever. So, I don’t know. I don’t know everybody that I interview and, the more I do this, the fewer people I really know, which is good.

[00:30:07] Nathan Wrigley: I set the expectations, like I said, with shared show notes, but also prior to hitting record, I mean, I know you so we didn’t do so much of that, but I always make time to, maybe even like half an hour or something just to chat before we hit record. So I’ll make sure that we just talk. And very, very often, very often I will do a call with somebody who wants to be on the podcast but doesn’t know if they can do a podcast. And we’ll just have a chat. And at the end of that chat, I’ll say, that’s what it’s like. Do you want to record it another day? And I’ve yet to find somebody that’s turned me down on that basis.

[00:30:45] Bud Kraus: You know, that’s an excellent point. because I’ve had a few people where English is not their language and they’ll say, well, I’ve never done a podcast. Now Anna Hurko, I was the first person, right the CEO of Crocoblock. My podcast was her first, her episode went through the roof. Absolutely went through the roof. And now you can’t get her off podcasts Like I see, she’s everywhere now, which is great. I love it. And you know, English is not her first. She speaks 85 languages, so it was great. Anna was fun. It’s an adventure. I guess it’s fun. I mean, God, Nathan, I have fun at everything I do, whether I’m writing, or spot podcasting or, you know, talking to you even.

[00:31:23] Nathan Wrigley: Even, yeah.

[00:31:24] Bud Kraus: One last thing I was about before the show, I try to keep that very short. Because I don’t want to not record something that’s really good. And I’ve noticed that a lot of really good stuff was being said before and after the recording. So I don’t want for that to happen. I want it to be recorded.

[00:31:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s interesting because I have the opposite intuition. I have the intuition that if I get to know them, and put them at their ease, that rapport that is built up over 20 minutes or half an hour, will then lead to a better experience because we’ll both feel a little bit more relaxed and comfortable.

[00:31:54] Bud Kraus: Well, for what you do and how you do it, that makes a lot of sense. For me, it doesn’t because I’m going to leave stuff out. Now, here’s the problem though, and you probably realize this too. If you don’t know somebody, you don’t have a pre-established speaking pattern, and you tend to step on their words and they tend to step on yours. But like you and I, we pretty much have talked to each other, you know, for a while and different times. And so we now know, this is when I stop and this is when he stopped. You know, that kind of thing. It’s really hard when you’re first talking to somebody on a podcast and you don’t know them, boy, you’re going to be stepping on each other like crazy, in many cases.

[00:32:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s kind of curious. So here’s an interesting thought then. You said that you’re enjoying it, which is lovely. I still very much enjoy doing podcasting. I have to pinch myself. What about the scenario where you have made podcasting the center, the fulcrum of what you do, and how you earn your money, and the sponsorships and all of those kinds of things. And then what if you don’t enjoy it anymore? Would it be a bit like the clients, would you be willing at that point to drop podcasting? Or do you feel like this is you for life now, this is what you’re doing?

[00:32:58] Bud Kraus: This is it now. I have to say, there are some days, if you ask my wife, that I get, oh, it’s not growing. It’s like flattened out. It’s like, she goes, because I realise well, what else are you going to do? There’s nothing else for you to do. This is like the perfect thing for legally blind people. What else are you going to do?

[00:33:14] Nathan Wrigley: You’re going to keep going.

[00:33:15] Bud Kraus: Well, as long as, I mean, I’m not a kid. I’m sort of, you know, on the senior side of life. But there’s no reason to stop as long as I can keep doing it, you know? And I just got started doing it, so who knows.

[00:33:26] Nathan Wrigley: The barrier to entry is low. The enjoyment is high. So it sounds like the perfect way to spend the next few years certainly.

I’ve discovered that about 35 to 40 minutes is about the sweet spot for a podcast episode, because it seems be the attention span that most people have got.

So that is a neat little segue for me to say we’re at minute 37 and a half, which is more or less exactly in the middle of that sweet spot. So I’m going to ask you just to sort of sign off. Tell us where we can find you. Where is the website, as in the URL? I know we’ve said the name of the podcast many, many times, but where can we find you? And where do we find you on socials and things like that?

[00:34:03] Bud Kraus: Oh God. Alright I have a website called seriouslybud.com It’s kind of easy to remember if you can remember the name. One little quick thing, I know we’re running out of time. It doesn’t have the word WordPress or WP in it, which is different than a lot of podcasts. So it could be done for anything. And it wasn’t a name that I came up with. It was my graphic designer came up with it.

Anyway, seriouslybud.com Now, the good thing about that is you can get all the episodes from the past. It’s very easy to access all those episodes. And eventually I’m going to be launching a blog which will discuss the show, the people in the show, the behind the scenes, all that kinda stuff. So I’m working on that. And as far as social, just, Bud Kraus, or seriously bud? That’s Kraus, No, E. Only one S. How’s that?

[00:34:45] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect. I will make sure that those links and any others that we mentioned during the course of this recording go into the show notes. Head to wptavern.com/podcast, search for the episode with Bud Kraus. And, Bud, it just remains for me to say thank you very much for chatting to me today.

[00:35:00] Bud Kraus: It’s always a pleasure to talk to. Well, let’s just say this. The pleasure was all yours, okay.

[00:35:05] Nathan Wrigley: You’re too modest.

[00:35:07] Bud Kraus: Alright, take care.

On the podcast today we have Bud Kraus.

Bud’s name might ring a bell in the WordPress community, not only for his teaching and writing, but also as the host of the “Seriously, BUD?” podcast. Bud’s WordPress journey started back in 2009 when a client told him he had to learn WordPress, and ever since he’s been immersed in all aspects of it: from building sites, to teaching, to creating content for major WordPress businesses. These days, Bud calls himself a WordPress content creative, focusing mainly on producing articles, videos, and of course, his own podcast.

In this episode, we turn the microphone around on Bud to talk about his transition from site building to content creation. He shares how the “Seriously, BUD?” podcast came out of a desire to have real, unscripted conversations with people from around the WordPress community. Chats that go beyond plugins and code, and dig into the stories, quirks, and lives of the people behind the tech.

We talk about the format of the show, Bud’s techniques for bringing out interesting stories, and the importance of really listening to guests. Bud explains his approach to podcast technology, why he thinks the tech stack doesn’t have to be intimidating or expensive, and he also offers insights into the editing process that makes his interviews come alive.

Towards the end, Bud shares his thoughts on the future of podcasting, why it’s still such an appealing medium, and what it takes to keep a show fresh and enjoyable for the long haul.

If you’re curious about podcasting, interested in the art of conversation, or are thinking of starting your own show, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Seriously, BUD? podcast

Joy of WP

Questions I Wish I Had Asked – Bud’s eBook

Descript

SquadCast

Riverside

Buzzsprout