Episode Transcript
Hannah: Hi, welcome to episode 36 of the Kadence Beat. So excited to be here today. And before we get started talking about anything, I’m super excited to introduce, our new marketing director at Kadence, Katy Boykin. If you’ve been in the, The Facebook community at all. You’ve probably seen her already, but she is now one of our team.
We’re so stoked. So honored. And yeah, this is her first inauguration into the Kadence Beat. Katy. How are you doing?
Katy: Good. I’m excited to be here.
Ben: This is going to be fun. I think I’ll say from my side. I have admired Katy’s work a lot, um, pre coming to the Kadence team. And now that she’s here, I’m like, wow, you really go after stuff and it’s awesome.
So it’s going to be really fun, uh, as we go forward, doing more of these together and also working together. So it’s fun that you’re here.
Katy: Yeah, it’s a privilege, honestly. And I was not in the market for a job by the way, but I love Kadence so much. When it came available, I was like, I at least got to throw my name in the hat and see if it’s a good fit. And. Turns out it was a perfect fit. So it’s my honor to be here, really.
Hannah: Yeah. We’re very happy about it. Super fun to have somebody who’s already been in the Kadence community rather than having to teach somebody about this world. Um, Katy’s just deeply submerged and she even spoke at amplify last year. If you haven’t listened to her talk from amplify. I think it was in the fall that you spoke, Katy, go back and have a listen. She’s super knowledgeable. Anyway, we’re so excited.
Ben: So as this is our first podcast with her, we thought it best to grill her and try to figure out all the lessons that she learned in her past jobs slash, uh, owning and running a business. You still kind of are, so we’re not discounting that. Uh, but we want to know how you built the brand, um, and all the lessons you learned in terms of stuff. So I think, um, Like first maybe, um, tell every, our audience a little bit about yourself in terms of like, this is me in a nutshell. Uh, and then to dive into what got you started into web development in general?
Katy: Okay. So first of all, I got my degree in hospitality management, so I have no business being in this space, like from a degree perspective. Um, but I’ve always been interested in design. Even when I was in high school, I took graphic design classes. I was on the yearbook team.
So I’ve always had an interest in design and my career path is, Totally like ping pongs all over the place. Um, but I worked in hotels and country clubs for a long time. Then I didn’t love that life. So I started working for my parents company in their it department. I wore many hats, HR marketing, but I didn’t love that either.
That wasn’t my calling. So then I got into like fitness and so I was starting to do like side jobs and that’s actually how I was introduced to like the world of websites for the first time because I had to build my own website and promote my own services. And so that’s kind of how I started and all of that happened in 2015.
And then, Eventually I got really connected with the other page builder tool company. It was like a small group of like three guys who ran this little thing. Um, and it was in a very niche market. So you didn’t, wouldn’t really hear about them, but I was really well connected in their community and they asked me to come on board.
And so I started working for their company full time, left my parents job. So then I was like an account manager working for. a website company. And I really didn’t do any of the design work at the time. I was just like working with customers and all of that type of a thing, but that’s like my entry point into design. Then eventually I was the one making recommendations because I was studying marketing and I was, constantly learning, and then I eventually, um, started taking on design clients with like page builder tools that are no code, easy to do.
Cause I don’t know how to do code, full disclosure, um, but I have an incredible team who does. So anytime that, that’s tip number one, if you’re looking for a tip and you’re like, wait, I really love website design, but I don’t know how to code. There are so many code free tools out there. Kadence is one of them and my favorite tool personally.
But it’s just, it’s a great time to get into the website design and development world right now because of all of the code free tools that are available and accessible, but that was my path into it was like, I love design. I found a tool that I could, you know, really cling on to, and then built, started building a business out of there.
I also started my own lifestyle blog, um, back in 2018. And I did that as a case study for the existing customers. I was serving in that website design business to like teach them about SEO and show them that I’m a case study. I can, I can do it. Let me just show you. And I wound up like building that and then eventually selling it later in order to pursue my website design business full time. Um, cause I actually never started this business, like to become a website designer, it was like a little evolution. So it was really fascinating. And, people just kept asking me all the time, like, Hey, you seem to really enjoy website design. Like, can you just do this one page for me? Can you just do this? So I started doing like a 50 page here or there on the side. Then I started doing like a 500 website in total. And now we’re doing like starting at 5,000 website packages, um, with the company that I’m at now. So like, it’s been a process of an evolution of my journey into design. But, how I got introduced to Kadence was I was using another popular page builder tool, but it was so bloated.
Speeds were not good. And, um, everybody kept talking about this tool called Kadence and my particular audience was bloggers and online business owners. So no one doing like local business stuff, but everybody was caring about performance because their ad revenue was attached to it. And so I had no choice, but to explore Kadence and I was really hesitant at first, and it wasn’t like the tool I was used to. But now when I try to go back to the other tool, I’m like, this is so lame. Kadence is way better. So now I exclusively design with Kadence and I have for the last three years and it’s great.
Ben: Nice. Let me back up a little bit and say, okay, you self taught a lot of stuff. Marketing, SEO, all that stuff. What are some of the ways in which you found that, like what, if someone was like, how do I follow in those steps? What are like some of the big influences, big ones you’re like, Oh, you got to read this, or you got to go watch this YouTube or what is it like what’s out there that you would say really elevated you?
Katy: I would say first and foremost, it’s a mindset that you have to adopt, that you’re constantly a student and you want to learn and grow. So like, even in my pastime of like, if I’m washing dishes or if I’m, you know, walking the dog, I’ve got a podcast in my ears. So there’s like this, Constant posture of growth and development.
But when I’m listening to listening to something, it’s always like a business podcast or something that’s going to teach me into the marketing or business or some sort of skill I’m constantly learning in that regard. So while I could tell you that there are probably a few key courses that I wound up taking and things like that, it ultimately is this posture of I’m constantly learning and growing and I want to be better at It’s like a mentality that I have overall.
So if you’re watching way too much Netflix and you want to build a business, trade a little bit of your Netflix time for, you know, some podcasts that are going to help you with, you know, business growth and development, because that’s going to, um, I mean, that’s going to be a net positive result for you over the, over the long run.
I will say that Brandon Gailey was someone that I learned SEO from. He doesn’t have the course that I originally. Um, learned from him on the market anymore, but Brandon Gailey was a great, he has the blogging millionaire podcast, love listening to all of his stuff. And I can attest that like, even the stuff that was in his courses, you can find for free on his podcast now.
So that’s a great free product podcast to start listening to. If you want to learn the ins and outs of like technical SEO, um, But he does it in a really, you know, beginner way. Um, as a website designer, I invested with, um, Elizabeth McCravey. I mean, that was a pretty big course investment, but it taught me like the business side of like website design agency, so to speak is not really an agency.
I’ve, you know, I’m in a membership for other website designers. Um, Josh Hall has one of those and it’s really great. So like there’s, I mean, there’s so many things I’ve, I’ve probably invested. A college education worth of courses over in the last decade. I don’t know, almost a decade now. But that’s cool.
Hannah: That’s cool to hear. I do feel like you are who our target audience often is, like, kind of who we talked to a lot in this podcast are people who are trying to build a business and they’re like doing all the things and it’s hard to know where to start. And then hard to have success with it. And like, here, you’ve done it.
So it’s cool to hear just some of those secrets and also like, A good reminder to people that it takes work. It takes investment, like both in finances and time and, um, and willingness. So that’s huge. Yeah. And hopefully encouraging to people who are listening.
Katy: Yeah. And for clarification, I used to have a personal brand at Katyboykin.com and for the longest time, it felt a little bit weird. Being a personal brand when I started having a team underneath me and a lot of my team was designing a lot of stuff. And so like site credits would be like site designed by Katy Boykin. And I’m like, actually Ana did that.
And I also, um, I used to have a membership program called DIY dream site. And so that was. It was just supposed to be the name of a program but it evolved as I Wanted to get away from the personal brand side of things and also consider If I want to sell this as an asset potentially in the future It also needs to be under a brand name that I can sell that’s apart from myself So I rolled everything into DIY dream site now, so that’s where The second business, um, that I have is, is run and it’s great.
And you can still go to Katyboykin. com and you’ll just see that I work for Kadence now and before you can go work with me at DIY dream site. And it’s a really fun process, but I have had that evolution of like being a personal brand and then shifting into like a real business. Agency, a boutique agency, so to speak.
Um, and that’s been an interesting experience as well. Probably lots of lessons about that.
Ben: Yeah. Speaking of lessons, I want to keep going back to this story. So you got into building sites and you did what I, I was the same way early on. You build a page for a site for 50 or. Basically for free, you’re trying to build your portfolio and then, you know, you’re able to charge 500 and, and now you mentioned like, Hey, I’m starting at 5, 000.
What, not just on a, like, like obviously you got better in that timeframe. So there’s like, you’re building a portfolio, but like what are the key differences between the sites you develop now? Like in terms of all of your offering versus the sites then. Because as you have progressed, what did you not like think about early on that you’re now like, Oh yeah, we do all this stuff now.
Katy: Um, anytime when I was a beginner on my own and I was doing literally everything from sales to design, development, launching support, like when it was just me and I was wearing the only hat, um, I didn’t really have a lot of processes and systems in place and Ultimately, once I built that system, it was a lot easier to plug customers in, to have a really positive experience throughout the entire journey.
Um, I would also say that there is a huge bit of imposter syndrome when you are doing it all on your own, especially when you’re self taught because you’re like, who am I? I don’t know how to do this. What if I get in over my head? What am I going to do? When I started to outsource, um, and the only reason I could outsource is because I started having a steady stream of, of work, but that also gave me a little bit more confidence, um, along the way.
So I would just say like, it’s really about like each project that I completed, I made sure to do an incredible job throughout from customer onboarding to customer launching experience. And then once that went really well, it was like, I had evidence that I was good enough to keep doing. Something else.
So, I mean, processes for sure. Like if you don’t have a good system to onboard from like taking a leads information to getting them on a sales call quickly to sending them a proposal, contract, um, invoice, all of those things, then that process is going to be a pain for your existing customer onboarding.
Plus I sometimes I’ll book like 12 weeks in advance for a project. Like we don’t actually kick off and start doing design work for three months in advance, which is a long time for someone to wait. So that onboarding experience as well, and giving them homework to do and making sure the project is very clear, all of that, once I had that system in place, it was like, I started to be able to, um, really focused on even more incredible designs.
And the other thing I would say, like the limitation was. Sometimes I wouldn’t explore other cool designs because I did have those limitations. And once I let go of the mindset that. I had to be the one to know how to do it all. And instead was able to outsource and say, I don’t know how to do it. I’ll just find someone else who already has that skillset and pay for it.
Because ultimately it’s about serving my customer at the end. That’s what I think when my business really started to grow and to flourish in different ways, because I, I got out of my own way and said, it doesn’t matter that I’m not the one who knows how to do it, it matters that I have a team that’s supporting my customers and they know how to do it.
And the customer is ultimately supported at the end of the day.
Hannah: So I’m curious, where did marketing come into all of this? Like, obviously that’s a part of it, but what got you focused on marketing to where you’re now, like in the role you are now at Kadence, um, because obviously it doesn’t seem like you have any kind of marketing background, but you’ve had to do some, you’ve had to learn a lot along the way.
So what’s that looked like?
Katy: I had to do a lot of marketing when I worked for a country club. A club, corp country club in Dallas. And I had to do a lot of marketing. Like I was event sales and event everything. Like I had to market to the customers. I had to sell them. I had to get them in, in the door, book the prod, not the project book, the actual client, like the event, the wedding or the gala or whatever.
So I did a lot of marketing. Um, I had marketing classes in college. So marketing has always been something that I’ve been working on, no matter what job it was. And then I really loved the story brand framework from Donald Miller. And I have that book on one of my bookshelves behind me. Um, and I use that framework to really hone in on like copywriting copywriting is also I actually have been a writer like all my life I used to remember going into like my mamaw’s house. She didn’t have internet back at the time so I would write creative short stories like when I was a little girl in the back bedroom. And it’s like writing has always been something that i’ve been interested in as well. And so naturally I just kind of joined my passion for websites and also trying to make sure that it was like conversion focused.
And I don’t know, I’ve just always had this interest in it. And so I’ve always just like learned the skill and try to become better along the way. So. That’s cool.
Hannah: I love that.
Ben: The challenges that a lot of people have with doing freelances, getting the content from the in person, all of the getting payment, like all those struggles, like, is the systems that you put in place, is that, been the biggest change for that?
Or do you have any other like tips for like, how do you get client to give you content or to give you the things you need to get moving on their project?
Katy: I would say that’s also my biggest pain point as a website designer and, um, systems, 100%. Like I use a tool called Dubsado, but like HoneyBook is another alternative option.
Um, and that does all of the client. Sales process. It does the like, even Calendly is like white labeled, I think in there as well. So I can schedule all of my calls with clients. I do the proposal that contract the invoice. I can honestly say that I’ve not had any customers be late on their payments. It’s just like the system’s automatically reminding people when their payments are due.
And so like that system in and of itself, like if you don’t have a good system to like close the deal, like. I love how you guys are using the time to actually like look into some sort of CRM that can help you with that process because that’ll take a big load off of your shoulders. But then when it comes to client collection, what I’ve been doing is trying to get a Google doc with each page and I create a spreadsheet as well.
That has like a sitemap of these are all of the pages that we’re going to be working on or like theme elements that we’re going to be working on from like blog archive, blog category. Single post, 404 page, policy pages, all of those. I put that in one spreadsheet so the customer knows these are all of the elements that we’re going to be working on.
And then I also link up that Google Doc. And in that Google Doc, I have like, what is the purpose of this page? And, um, here are some examples of pages that we’ve designed that look like this. And then please provide your content that you want to see on this page below this line. And so I also provide them with like video tutorials in their homework as well, that they can watch it like a self paced, um, kind of process.
So that way, like as soon as they get onboarded into the system, they can go at their own pace, watch their own tutorials, and they kind of have that guidance. I also started building in a 90 minute. Copywriting, brainstorming session for my customers and about 95 percent of my customers actually take advantage of that now because they just don’t know where to begin and they want to see how my brain works when, when I look at their homepage, for instance, and then as soon as we have that call, they usually have a lot of clarity and they’re like, Oh, okay, I can do this for the rest of my pages now.
And so that’s also a really helpful thing that I’ve implemented. And mainly because someone asked me and I was like, wait, I should do that for every single customer. Why am I not doing that?
Ben: For those who are interested in like offering freelance services and stuff. How do you do the design process with customers?
Like, do you, I mean, walk me through like step one, step two, step three. Like, do you have them go and find sites that they like? Do you have them? Or do you show them sites that they should like because you know better? Or like, how does that work? How, like, what are the pro, what’s the process there?
Katy: I will say that most of my clients are well established.
So I should say that, like, if you’re going to get a custom design, you’re most likely already experienced and you’ve, you’ve created some level of success already. And so. If you’re a beginner, it’s going to be a little bit different because most of my customers already know what they want and they’ve already had an element of success.
And so they just want to basically re redesign and get a website that kind of fits their business or their blog, more like a glove versus kind of some like cookie cutter site, or maybe it’s just kind of been piecemealed together over, over the years. So that context I feel like is important for this conversation.
Um, What was the original question that you asked?
Ben: Walk me through the steps of the design. Okay. So, you’re talking to someone who pretty much knows what they want, but when you’re designing a website for them, do you have them go and give you, like, some inspiration that they like, or do you have Do you mock that up first?
Do you give them like three options? What’s that? What does that all that look like?
Katy: So I have the part of the customer homework. I have them do two steps that are really important. One is filling out a brand questionnaire where I have about a seven page document with forms that I want them to fill out.
And that talks about everything from who is their ideal customer, what problems is, does their business or blogs, um, solve. It goes through like, what is your vision for like, what is, what is working well now for your website? What do you hate about it? What are you, who are your competitors and what are they doing so that we can at least look at what their design is doing and see where we can fill in the gap.
Plus, we also look at site design examples that they give me of like, I love these websites. I’d love to incorporate those. So that’s step one of this, like getting that brand questionnaire from the client is really helpful. Then I also asked them to fill out a Pinterest board. And so, And I want them to just pin things that inspire them.
And I have a prompt as well, where I give them, like, I don’t want you to just pin other website layouts. I want you to pin patterns or, um, just other things that inspire them. Maybe it’s like, uh, an interior design room, but it has all the colors that they want on their website. So that way, like, we’re not just thinking about copying some other website design, cause that’s frowned upon, obviously.
So like, it’s just like giving me an inspiration of like what I can pull from. And then usually. I don’t use Figma or any fancy tool just because I was never taught in that way. So whenever, um, it goes to design kickoff day, we go through all of the information, all of their homework. I, we collect all of that.
And then my team and I go back and we actually build out a brand settings page in Kadence so that’s step one is getting all of the theme settings all figured out. So colors, typography buttons, those are typically the three things that we. And then I have a page that’s built with Kadence that just shares shows like what is the H1 look like underneath the paragraph and then what is an H2 with the paragraph.
It looks at what are the button styles? What does it look like on a dark background versus a light background? So the customer gets that and also their homepage mockup. So I don’t do like wireframing where I do like a. Wild wireframe. Ireframe I typically will build out that homepage first and give them the brand design, like the brand page.
And then those are the two elements that I say, give me your feedback. Am I on the right track most of the time I am and, or on it is on it also is my other full time designer that I love and trust and. In those cases, um, if the customer is not happy or like, we’re, we need to adjust, then they’ll say, Ooh, like this, but I agree.
We, we should move this around or, or change this. So we’d go through all of those revisions until we are happy with those two stages then, and only then will we move on to other parts of the sitemap about contact, et cetera. Cause, and that process will typically take my team and I about a week to get right, because we’re exploring ideas.
And there are a lot of sections that we design that never see the light of day. Okay. But we’re like trying to figure out the best, you know, flow. And sometimes the customers too, like they don’t have a really built out homepage or like content is lacking. And so I’ll be like, Ooh, let’s add this. Or let’s so like, it’s also my expertise thinking about ways that we could fill in like thin or missing content as well.
And then. Sometimes I will do two presentations only with like, here’s what, if we do it exactly as you asked. And then here’s, if I’d put my spin on it, here’s what it would look like. And, um, then the customer will kind of go back and forth with what they like.
Ben: Nice. And how did you get to the color palette?
Is that normally something that they come with and you kind of tweak or you just stick with what they came with? How does that color specifically work? Cause that’s like, you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out color.
Katy: Yeah, the color is usually pulled from Swatches from the inspiration board on pinterest and or what they share in that brand questionnaire with me Most of the time they have a good direction of what they want to go with like i’ll just think of an example like rachel wojo Um, she’s a christian Author speaker.
And she talks a lot about like grief. And so blues and like the ocean were like symbols, symbols for her. And so that’s something that I kind of like pulled on of like, how do we incorporate the ocean and blue and because grief kind of hits you like a wave. And so sometimes there’s themes that will also show up and we just know that we’re going in a specific direction color wise.
Um, it’s also like the vibes. I do ask that question in my. Questionnaire branding questionnaire too. I ask like, well, how do you want your brand to feel when someone’s interacting with the website? Because if it’s bold and in your face, like we are, we might pick like blacks and maybe like a highlighter yellow, but if someone wants something really calming and neutral, then we’re going to go with a different color palette altogether.
Something like cream and light blues and things like that. So, um, Yeah. Sometimes color is a challenge, but most of the time customers know what they want and they give me enough direction that we can kind of nail it first or second try.
Ben: Do you differentiate between someone coming in with a logo and without one?
Like, do you think about that differently? If you’re like, Oh, I got to design to this logo versus like we’re going to make our make a custom logo. How do you approach that?
Katy: I don’t have a, Graphic designer on my team at all. So typically logo design is not included in the packages that we are designing. So most of the time, if the customer does not have a good logo, we will wind up using either.
The existing typography that we do and just like make them a quick word mark. That’s not customized. It’s just a simple one. Dash of sanity is a great example of that. If you go to dash of sanity. com, you can see how we did like a quick little word mark for them. Um, so there’s things like that that we’ll do, but most of the time customers will have a solid logo that might need to be like re Like the color might need to be updated.
So as long as we have the file or can, you know, can grab that, we can adjust it. Um, I know there are a lot of designers who are like completely the opposite of that. Now, if there is ever a logo that I’m like, absolutely, we can’t put this on the website. I will, I will say that I will communicate that, but it very rarely happens.
Most of the time people just, I mean, I have done like outsourced, um, Website or sorry, logos from other designers as well. And those have gone really well when I’ve done, but it’s not a requirement for me. It’s just not a skillset that I’ve personally had. And so I just didn’t offer it and it totally worked out.
Don’t feel limited. If you are like, I don’t have those skills. You can be empowered to find a graphic designer that you really enjoy working with and then see if they can help you. You know, outsourcing contract that work out. That’s another thing I wanted to mention. Um, the other thing that elevated my experience as well from like when I was a beginner to where I am now, is I have a referral partner, um, who I trust and, He helps me with all of my site speeds at the end of my project.
So I don’t have to work on that. So every single package I’ve just built in his site speed optimization service into my package. And so I’m up front with people like this is the site speed optimization is included in your package, but I’m not the one doing it. This trusted sources and all of those things.
And that’s been really game changing because a lot of customers care about the speed optimization. And I don’t have the expertise to say, let me go in and play around with all these settings, but I’ll just hire someone who can. And that’s been a really trusted source for me.
Ben: That’s cool. So if we were to try to summarize lessons learned.
Yeah. I’m going to, I’m going to see if I can get this. You tell me if I’m right or wrong. So one is to. Constantly be learning. Like you have to consider yourself someone who’s just like always learning and diving into new courses and new things. And also don’t focus in, make sure you have a broad scope, like you did design and marketing and branding and all the different levels, like make sure your scope is wide so that way you can help people in varying places.
And then don’t be afraid to get outside resources, get help, hire, or partner with people as being like key, and then make sure that you create systems and do it early. So that way, all of the stuff that is a pain to run, Can be funneled into a system to where you can track that payment and stuff. Is that, how does it, how’s that for a summary of tips from, from Katy?
Katy: Yeah. I think that’s great.
Ben: Anything else you want to add to that?
Katy: I mean, I’m just a huge fan of Kadence overall, like the community I felt like has been so welcoming and, um, how I found good help. That might be a question. Someone’s asking, honestly, I have found every single contractor that works. In my business, except for one, cause I had a relationship with the past company that I worked for, um, has come from the Kadence Facebook group.
So if you are a Kadence user, you are building websites exclusively with Kadence and you need help. Ask in the Facebook group. Is there anyone else who has the capacity to take on some work? Um, that’s also been a really great resource for me. And I feel like Kadence is very unique and specific because a lot of people have knowledge of CSS and HTML, but they might’ve worked with a different tool, a different page builder plugin, and never worked with Kadence and just having that baseline knowledge of someone who has the expertise of using Kadence, like elevated my business.
Significantly versus like having to train someone so also try to hire someone who has the skills that you already need Versus trying to hire someone a little bit more junior and trying to teach them because that will definitely It just doesn’t, I’ve tried that as well. And that is less effective as just hiring for the skills that you need.
And doing that in the Facebook group is great. Cause there’s almost 15, 000 people in that Facebook group. So yeah, definitely check it out.
Ben: If you haven’t yet joined our group, it’s a lot of fun, a lot going on in there. Yeah. Okay. So we’re going to do a quick update. Hannah, is that where we’re going on Kadence stuff?
Hannah: Yeah, sure. you tell us what’s going on. The people want to know things that are happening in Kadence.
Ben: So we are, um, we’re currently working on a series of in quick wins for the customer base that we’re going to try to get out in the next month or so. And some of those things, uh, I’ll hint at now we’re doing some stuff with, The image block to add some new controls in there to make that a little bit more flexible and workable.
We’re also working on tooltips, which is gonna be something that comes soon. Um, you’ll be able to put tooltips on icons and buttons and text, and then, um, We’re also kind of scoping out a custom ability to just put in a custom icon. So right now we have a way to do that, which you kind of do it through a whole package of icons and a third party app called icon moon, which is free.
You can just put your icons in there. But what we’re working on right now is a way for you to just simply. If you’ve got an SVG and you want it to be an icon in the icon library, it’ll just be able to like upload that SVG and you’ll have your custom icon. So anywhere that you use icons and Kadence, you’ll be able to just upload the one you want.
Um, so those are like three of the kind of quick wins we’re working on. Big project wise. We’ve been working on this for several months now, and that is our advanced header and advanced navigation blocks. Those are going to be really crucial long term for Kadence and just in expanding the abilities of what you can do in the block editor and so.
As we eventually move to a world where we are doing more in full site editing, potentially. Um, I’m not suggesting anyone does that yet, but, uh, this will be a very useful tool for that. Uh, as well as like, if you’re building in Kadence, you’re using elements, you want to do custom headers with elements with those conditionals.
This is a really easy way to do that. Do that. We’ll be able to actually build it in the block editor. So that header and advanced nav has been like a project I’ve been wanting to do for a long, long time, as far as figure this out, solve this really hard question of like, how do I do advanced headers inside of Gutenberg?
And so we’re working through all of that and all of the weirdness of that as well, um, that comes up of like managing a mobile header and a desktop header and things like that, that you currently cannot do with standard Gutberg. So that’s really exciting and stuff we’re, we’re developing toward, um, and that’s.
A big chunk of what we’re doing. Everyone kind of always clamors. Whenever I say anything about AI, they’re like, stop working on AI. Um, we are doing something really interesting with AI and that is a page wizard that will allow you to create a custom page where you’ll define the context for that page.
So that is, um, not taking up a lot of dev time. I know everyone’s worried that we’re spending all of our time on AI. I see that frequently and I’m like, no, actually we’re not. But, um, But it is something we’re still like developing more and more for AI. And, uh, and I’m finding this one to be like the most useful AI thing that we’ve so far created in terms of like, I think this is going to be really fun for people.
So that’s kind of a quick update on Kadence and where, where things are at. Hannah, you want to close us out? Yeah.
Hannah: Well, a couple of other things. One, if you’re listening to this, then by now, because tomorrow when recording this, we’re recording this on the 29th of May, Ben is doing a speed build tomorrow with, uh, it’s put on by poodle press and it’s going to be fun.
You’re going up against Justin from automatic. Is that right?
Ben: Yes. Yeah.
Hannah: Yeah. It’ll be fun. Tune in tomorrow. Well tune it at this point. You can just go watch the recording cause it’ll be, it’ll already be live. Um, but watch that. We’re, we’re really excited to see Ben.
Ben: Um, just to givesome context, I’m going to show up for a live stream. I’m going to be told at that point and only at that point, here’s the website you need to build, and I’m going to try to build it as fast as I can. And at the same time. Another person’s going to be trying to build a website. So they’re going to compare and contrast how fast and how well we’re doing. So no pressure.
Katy: I’m excited. It’ll be fun to watch. You do get to use Kadence, yeah? Even the pro version?
Ben: Yeah, it’d be pretty handcuffing if they didn’t let me do that.
Hannah: For sure. Built a site with tools you’ve never used before.
Ben: Yeah, seriously.
Hannah: The other thing is that Stellar, which is the family of brands that we are a part of, is putting on an event called Stellar Spark on July 19th. So mark your calendars. It’s going to be just an all day virtual conference with speakers from all over. So that’ll be super fun. Looking forward to that.
Ben: I got a little preview of the speakers. Um, so that’s cool. It’s going to be good. Not announced yet, but I saw a preview.
Hannah: I love that. It’ll be fun.
Well, Katy, thanks for joining us. Ben, thanks for being here as always.
Katy: I’m excited to come back and have a lot more interviews with other cool, cool people in the community and sharing all that we create at Kadence it’s going to be a fun ride.
Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. We’ve got some fun interviews lined up for the Kadence Beat. So keep listening, subscribe if you haven’t subscribed. We’ll see you guys soon. Bye. Bye.
