What Should I Be | Transcript

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW

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modified due to any challenges encountered during the process of transcribing the interview.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:00:07): Welcome. My name is Gary Gordon, and I'm the Founder of What Should I Be. We're here, today, talking with Antonie Potgieter, and he has a Company that he started and owns, called Tribulant. And why don't you start by just telling us, you know, a little bit about how you got started, where you're located? Tell us about Tribulant, and just walk us, in other words, to this company that you started, and you know, how old you are would be great. Just anything that you might want to tell us about you to get started.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:00:39): Great. Thanks Gary. Well, Tribulant is a Software Company develops WordPress plugins. They're basically pieces of software for a specific CMS, which is WordPress. And how I got started is that I basically developed an interest in WordPress and wrote a small email program, and that evolved into a commercial solution.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:01:09): So, WordPress, for those who aren't familiar, is a content management system that is used by many people who build websites out throughout the world. And you had built a plugin for this - a newsletter plugin - originally? Is that correct?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:01:29): Yes. Yes, that's right. And it was just a very basic solution to start off with, and there was interest in it by clients and customers, so we ended up developing it and expanding it further, and then it became a commercial solution as well.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:01:47): So, let's step back first and let's go back in a time a little bit, like before all of this happened, because right now, when we were talking before, you had told me you're twenty-six years old. When did you actually get started with writing the newsletter plugin for the WordPress content management system?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:02:13): Okay. When I was about nineteen, I worked in a photo development shop, which is basically a shop that develops photos from phones and from digital cards like cards from your camera and all that.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:02:34): Okay, digital cards that I would put into my camera.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:02:37): Yeah, that's right.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:02:37): And what were you doing with them again?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:02:40): I was just basically a counter salesman in the shop. I didn't enjoy it that much. I didn't enjoy working for someone else and, you know, working for a fixed salary and all that. So, I decided that I would--

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:02:57): But you were just--

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:02:57): --leave that.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:02:59): Now, you were just a salesman at that time?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:03:02): Yes, that's right.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:03:03): Okay. I think we need to explain that you're down in South Africa right now.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:03:10): Yes.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:03:11): In Johannesburg.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:03:12): In Rustenburg.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:03:12): And we're on Skype, and there's just like a little bit of a delay. So, every once in a while, it might seem like we're stepping over each other, but that's just the nature of being so far away I guess.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:03:24): Yes.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:03:25): So, nineteen years old. You were a salesman, selling these items. Did you ever do any programming prior to that?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:03:37): No, not at all.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:03:38): Not at all.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:03:39): Never.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:03:40): So how did you even start to learn how to write what you wrote in that newsletter application? How did you start learning?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:03:50): Okay. Well, like I said, I didn't really enjoy working in a store and doing sales, so I just decided that I would try and do something else. So, I got onto the Internet and started doing freelance design work, which I didn't have any experience in either. So, I did graphic design and I did flash animations, and things related to that on freelance sites on the Internet at either fixed or hourly fees. And as a result, I got involved with a little bit of HTML, which is a website language - a markup language - and a little bit of PHP as well, and then eventually databases, and everything related to that interested me.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:04:44): So, when you did the design work, if you didn't have any experience in it, how did you go about learning how to do design work and how to do HTML? Did you just pick up books? Did you look at tutorials on the Internet? Did you take any classes locally?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:05:00): No classes, but everything I know was self-taught from the Internet basically and a few eBooks online.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:05:09): And how long did it take you to just learn how to design things? I mean flash is much more than just, you know, using a graphic program, like maybe Photoshop or something like. Flash is much more involved. But you just learned that on your own, you're telling me.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:05:27): Yeah, and it took quite a while. And to be honest with you, I'm not the most creative person, so it wasn't the right area for me. And I actually someone tell me one day that, you know, I shouldn't quit my day job basically, because I did terrible designs. And I was trying my best, you know? For literally five dollars here, ten dollars there, spending maybe one or two days earning maybe five or ten dollars for the work. Obviously doing freelance work for online clients. And I didn't do very well, you know? I wasn't very creative, but I still tried, and eventually learned a few things in Photoshop and Illustrator, and flash, and different file types and all that. But I guess it's a good thing that I moved over to the coding instead sticking with the actual design part of things.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:06:27): So, how long, roughly, did you delve into the working in design stuff before you decided to move away from that?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:06:39): Roughly a year I would say.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:06:41): Okay. And then you started to learn HTML?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:06:47): Yes, that's right.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:06:49): And between starting to learn HTML, which is just a markup language, kind of like simplified code. It's not programming, but it's just a markup language, but you know, it's still a little bit complex. But when you started to learn that, and then started to get into PHP, which is more of a programming language, how long between HTML did you start going in PHP, or was that relatively soon?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:07:25): I can't tell for sure, but it was relatively soon I think. When you start designing websites using HTML, you move onto different things. At some point, you want to do more than just, you know, this actual static HTML. So you realize that you need to jump into some service or language like PHP. And it's terrifying because it's difficult at first and it's not something that you're familiar with, but yeah, it was relatively soon.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:08:04): And you learned all of this also on your own.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:08:08): Yeah, it was self-taught.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:08:09): How long would you say, teaching yourself, did it take you to learn PHP and how many hours, let's say, would you say you spent a week trying to teach yourself?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:08:25): It's a learning process and I would say that I still learn every single day up until today, seven years later. Well, six years later. But if you spend a few hours a day - say, four hours a day - trying to learn PHP, after a few months maybe, you should be able to write full applications and obviously still learn as you go on, because PHP is very big and it's a big library, and there's much that you can do with it.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:09:03): Now, did you also have to learn things like JavaScript?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:09:08): Yes. JavaScript is part of the user-side experience.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:09:14): Right.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:09:14): So, it actually goes together with HTML and CSS, which is on the frontend, which is what you user see or actually browse on your website, whereas PHP is on the server side. It's something that you do with the code and it gets converted back to HTML, and then serves to the user, if I'm not getting too technical.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:09:41): Oh, it's okay. Basically, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript send, you know, or work within the browsers to deliver what we see and we work with. PHP is something that actually is written and runs on the server, and then is generated to send back to the browser. I know it's a technical thing, but that's okay. But my question is: aside from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, you also then learned how to work with MySQL for like a database. Correct?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:10:16): Yes, that's right.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:10:17): Was there anything else that you had to learn prior to starting your company?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:10:27): Nothing specific. I guess that's a learning process as well. I didn't know much about business, so I didn't have any background in business itself. So that's something that you learn with time, which I still learn every day as well. But I guess I wasn't very well prepared, to be honest with you. I just started the business and took everything as I went along.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:10:53): Now, did you have anyone that was like a partner or someone else that you were working closely with all of this time, or were you doing this all on your own?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:11:04): Yeah, it was just me.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:11:06): Okay. Now, how long after you started to learn PHP do you think you actually started to work on this newsletter application that led to Tribulant - your company?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:11:21): Probably I would say roughly a year. I can't recall how long, but I'd say roughly a year. Eventually I discovered that you don't have to write everything from scratch when you're programming, and you can actually take advantage of certain libraries that are available, or frameworks that are available, to your usage. So I discovered WordPress, which is a framework and a content management system written in PHP, but you don't have to write everything from scratch. You get wrap and panel, and you get your frontend, and you can basically expand on that without having to do everything starting from nothing.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:12:07): Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:12:08): And that's when I wrote a small email application. That's probably a year after learning to write PHP. And as I said, it was very simple. It was basically something which sends a message to a list of subscribers, and that was it. Just very basic and straightforward.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:12:33): Okay. So, you wrote that. And from that point, what was the progression of interest that you saw and so forth that pushed you to say, "Hey, I'm going to, you know, build this newsletter application into something bigger and more robust for people"?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:12:55): Yes. I have a few clients, and I installed it for them. And they used it and gave me some feedback. And eventually it just expanded. I added more features to it and it became something could be used universally by WordPress users. So, I started selling it online at a very low price. I think it was ten dollars a license, and that's how I would -- basically went forward. Kept improving and, with time, the price went up. The support went up. The developing time went up as well, and then, as a result, we added more products to the range of products as well.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:13:41): So you started off developing this newsletter program that worked in WordPress, and you offered it, starting out, at just like ten dollars, which is great. And how many would you say, in your first year, people bought it? You know, how many sold?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:14:05): I would have to check on stats. I'm not sure. It was a long time ago, but not many initially.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:14:13): Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:14:15): But at some stage, it actually exploded in some odd way, if you know what I mean.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:14:21): Really?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:14:22): Yeah.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:14:23): Do you know what caused that?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:14:26): Well, there was a very big market for it. It was probably the second newsletter plugin available for WordPress, meaning the second ever solution to provide bulk email sending from the WordPress CMS. And it eventually got better than the first one, which was the competition - our competition. And yeah, there was a very big market for it. Everyone needed a newsletter solution for WordPress, and they still do up until today.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:14:59): Okay. Let me just try to explain to people who may not be terribly familiar with WordPress, but there's a lot of newsletter applications that are out there available. Some of them are what we call standalone, where you'd install them on a server and they have nothing to do with WordPress. You just log into it and it's on your server, and you can send out newsletters and collect email addresses from your visitors on your website. And then there is newsletter services like Constant Contact and MailChimp, and things like this, that are services where you don't have install anything. You just sign up and then you just pay them every time you send out a newsletter. Basically in that type of idea, but you don't have to install anything. And then there's, when you have a website and you use WordPress, there's a plugin, you know, just like what you've written, that gets installed as part of the website in WordPress. Just correct me if I make any mistakes in this, but then your plugin gets installed in WordPress and people then don't have to log into this separate, you know, standalone solution. Right from in WordPress they can just create, you know, a page or a post and that type of thing. An article. And they can send that. The benefit of having it built into the WordPress is that they can then hit a button basically and send that page or post out to their subscribers. So, by being integrated into WordPress, it just offers some other benefits and other features. And that's kind of like the three different models that are out there in the world. Would that be a correct way to explain it?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:16:42): Yes, absolutely.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:16:44): So, what you've done is you created a company that wrote what we call a plugin. It's just an added feature that you can add to WordPress. So you wrote this plugin that is a newsletter program, and that's what started your company.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:17:00): Yes.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:17:01): So, when you were a salesman back in the beginning, were you living with your parents? Were you living out on your own? Did you have your own rent that you were paying? Things like that?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:17:15): I was living with my mother, and I was paying partial rent on a very small salary.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:17:22): Okay. And how long? From that time when you left being a salesman, how long would you say it took you to where the program that you wrote, you put it onto WordPress, you know, you sold it, you were starting to make some money -- how long between the time when you were a salesman did it take you to where you were making, let's say, a reasonable income?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:17:48): Roughly about a year and a half, two years.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:17:52): Okay. That's all it took. That's great.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:17:55): Yeah, it all happened quite quick, and yeah.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:18:01): Do you think you just happened to fall into the right application that people were looking for? Was that a big part of it, or do you think it was something else?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:18:15): I think I was lucky to be honest, or I would call it blessed.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:18:19): Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:18:21): To have been able to tap into a market like WordPress at the right time, and it was a great opportunity. And I didn't really know what I was getting into, and obviously it was the right market and the right area to get into. But I would say that these days, before I do anything, I always do some research and find out if there is actually a market before doing something. But yeah, at that time, I was just lucky and blessed, to be honest.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:18:55): Okay. You know, just, again, for those of you who aren't familiar, you know, when you put this program and you put it into WordPress, one of the big benefits that you were able to have was the fact that there's literally millions of WordPress users throughout the world. And there's this plugin, you know, repository that people can go to, and then they search for different types of plugins and they just find you. And you can list your plugin in that repository, so you didn't have to pay any money. You didn't have to advertise it and market it at that point in time. Correct?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:19:36): Not exactly, because the WordPress Plugin Directory is for GPL-based applications, which means that they're only for free ones.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:19:47): Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:19:49): And in the beginning I made the decision to actually make this a commercial product instead of giving it away for free and not being able to offer any support or updates as a result of that. So, I made it commercial so that there would be funds to continue the development and updates and so forth, and all that. So, the WordPress repository is only for free plugins.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:21:14): So you couldn't use that.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:20:18): No.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:20:18): So how did you market what you wrote?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:20:23): I put up a website, which was Tribulant.com at that time, and it just looked a little bit different. But I put up the website and the website itself wasn't WordPress at that stage, and it just had a page on it, which said, "WordPress Newsletter Plugin" with a little graphic and a short description, and basically a button, which you could click to buy it using your credit card.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:20:52): Did you have any sort of online demo that people could test out?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:20:57): At that stage, possibly not. The demo came later on. I don't think I had one on in the beginning, to be honest.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:21:10): Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:21:12): So they would just reach out and an explanation, and a few pieces of description, and the list of features.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:21:21): Okay. Now, I know, in the repository, a lot of companies that write plugins offer like a free version, and then, if you want, you can get extra features by moving up to their paid version. Was there any reason why you didn't decide to go that route and just wanted to make it paid without any like introductory free-level version.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:21:45): Yeah, two probable reasons. The first one would be that if you provide a, say, free or a lite version, and then pro or a paid version, people would install the free and lite version, and I think the majority of people would just stick to it rather than actually upgrading to pro. And then, there was just my (Unclear 22:11.8). I'm not entirely sure if it would've worked that way, but that was my idea. And then the second reason would be that it would complicate things having to develop two different versions. One, which is lite or free, having limited features, and then a pro version, which has added features to it, so you can both maintain at the same time.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:23:37): Okay. So, now we're, you know, about four or five years later. Would that be correct?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:22:44): Yeah, that's right.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:22:45): Do you have any people that are working for you with Tribulant, or is it just you doing everything still?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:22:53): We have two people - Vitor and Philip. They're doing support. And Vitor is involved in the development a little bit, and he does design work as well. And then we have Philip on technical support full-time.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:23:13): Okay. Now, tell me about, you know, what your average day looks like, you know, in what you do. You now have this company, and are you happy? Can you see yourself doing anything else at this point?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:23:33): Yes, I am happy. Sometimes I'm buried in work and I can't always get to everything, so it's always busy and it's overwhelming from time-to-time. But I love my work and I guess it's a good thing to be busy.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:23:52): Well, what -- like when you wake up, start me off in the morning. In other words, on an average day, you'll wake up, and just take me through the kind of things that you're going to do, as this person who owns a company, has to make sure that the development keeps going. You have two people that are working for you. So, just take me through what an average day is like if I were to be following you around.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:24:18): Okay. Well, I will get up in the morning and I would usually decide whether I would go into the office or whether I need some peace and quiet and sit at home at my home office and develop here. And the first thing I do in the morning is basically quickly check emails. See what I need to do. If I need to answer anyone, if anyone needs my help, or input or feedback. And then the second thing is that I would jump into our help desk, which basically our primary responsibility, and that is customer support. It's the most important thing. It's the first thing we do every single day. If there are many support requests, we would leave everything else so that we can get to that and answer everyone. And if the support is good or something specific needs to be done, I would do development during the day. Otherwise I would just leave it for the evenings, and I would come back in the evenings at 8PM, and that's actually my favorite time of the day; is sitting at night when it quiet and nothing bothers you, and I can sit in the office and put all my concentration into the actual development of certain features or applications, or changes for customers. So, yeah. And then, my people - Vitor does a little bit of everything. He helps me with design and development, and then also does some technical support. And then we have Philip, which he does support at least. So he does life support, forums, and our help desk, which is where all our support queries come into. But we basically work as a team all day, every single day. We have a joint Skype conversation here, on Skype, so we discuss certain tickets with one another and features, improvements, and we keep a log of all this. If there are any new suggestions for features, or bugs, or improvements, we would keep them on a list for each package individually so that we don't forget about them. And yeah, that's pretty much what we do.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:26:56): The other two gentlemen - are they local to you or are they somewhere else in the world?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:27:02): Philip is local, but he's in a different city. He's in Pretoria. And Vitor is not local. He's in Brazil. So, we're all working remotely online. And I haven't met Vitor yet, ever, in about two and a half years. And I've met Philip, obviously, since he lives in South Africa. But we make a great team, even though we don't see each other every single day.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:27:34): How did you meet each other?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:27:37): On the Internet. I can't recall exactly how and where, but it was primarily through Tribulant Software. I think Vitor was actually, since he's a designer, he did some freelance work and he used one of our packages, and he contacted support with a few questions, and that's how we got into contact. And Philip was on the Internet as well. I think he was interested in a support position, so he contacted us and we employed him. That's as far as I can remember.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:28:15): So, both of those people were people that interacted with you on a support level that eventually you reached out to them and decided that maybe they can help you on some sort of either ad hoc or permanent basis.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:28:35): Yeah, that's right.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:28:36): Okay, cool. Now, when you started, it doesn't sound like you had or required a lot of money to get this all going. Is that correct, or did you need some money?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:28:49): Not at all. Not much. Basically what you need is a computer, whether it's a good one or an old one - it doesn't matter -, and an Internet connection.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:29:03): Okay. A good one or an old one, okay. Now, I'm just trying to just really understand, you know, what would be required. Like let's say I'm just an average guy out there. An average girl. A woman. And I want to start my own, you know, Internet business, where I want to program something. So, I now know that I need to go out and learn how to program, whether or not I learn from a school or learn on my own, and you happened to learn on your own, and then, you know, start just diving into it and maybe write a program. And you used WordPress as kind of like the magnet. In other words, because when I say you used WordPress as the magnet, all the WordPress users that are out there, you know, were natural potential customers for what you were building, because your thing that you built - the newsletter plugin - plugged right into WordPress. So, anybody that was using WordPress could use your stuff. So, what kind of advice might you give to someone who, you know, is almost at any age, but they could be a young person - maybe fifteen, sixteen, eighteen. Maybe they're older and looking for a new career, and you know, maybe they've been doing program or want to learn programming, but what would you tell them, now, from the things that you've learned in starting your own business? What kinds of tips and recommendations? If you were sitting down with somebody and they were thinking about starting their own business similar to what you're doing, what would you tell them?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:30:52): I would say the first thing is that your approach should be right. And I know there is a very well known statement that says money is in computers, which is not necessarily true, because I've see many failed companies and it depends on what you do. It doesn't mean that money is just in IT. So, the approach would be that if you want to go into this market that you have a passion for what you do and that your reasons are right. So, the first thing would be the passion and enjoyment for the actual programming itself so that you can enjoy what you do.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:31:33): That's great. Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:31:35): If you feel that you have a passion for owning your own business or an online business - an Internet business - and you don't want to get involved with the actual programming - technical part of things -, then you could rather get someone to do that for you.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:31:51): Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:31:52): Instead of putting yourself through that if you're not enjoying it. And then the requirements would be basically having a computer and having an Internet connection. You don't need fancy corporate offices. I know many Internet businesses running from home offices. You don't need capital set up an office building or to set up multiple desks, to hire multiple people, to start off with. You can start off on your own or with a partner. You can start off small and then expand later on, but you don't need to take a loan or start off big immediately. And then, once you have the idea that you want to do this - you want to build an Internet business or an online business -, get the right idea for what you want to do. If you want to develop a piece of software or put an application online that serves a specific purpose, do some research and find out if there is an actual market for it, because if you decide that you want to launch a dating service, for example, it might be saturated because there are so many out there. And you could do one, even if there is competition, but you would have to do either something unique or a bit better, or do it efficiently so that there is a place in the market for you as well.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:33:26): Where and what type of research or where would somebody go to do the proper research, from what you know? I mean I don't know if you're, right now, because I know you're also doing some other things. Correct? Other than just the newsletter plugin.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:33:43): Yes, we've got some other packages as well. Some other WordPress plugins.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:33:50): Now, did you--

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:33:50): I would say -- Sorry.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:33:53): It's okay. I was just going to say did you do research to find out if those plugins were going to be needed and things like that, or how did you decide on those plugins?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:34:06): Initially not, but with our second package, which was an eCommerce solution for WordPress, I did some research and obviously, because of the nature of this, WordPress itself has a very big user base, which is millions, and there wasn't any significant eCommerce solutions for WordPress itself so that people could sell products and services online. So, in that case, yes, basically the research was that there was a very big demand for it and there was talk about development in that area, but nothing was available at that time. But it depends on what you want to do and what market you want to go into. If you're going into a different market, even though it's an online business as well, it might be a different market than WordPress or eCommerce, or serving your clients.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:35:07): Now--

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:35:08): You could--

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:35:11): What I was going to say was, if you don't mind me interrupting for a second, but it doesn't sound like -- your background, when you began. It didn't sound like you were the best designer in the world. It didn't sound like you were the best HTML coder in the world. It doesn't even sound like you're the best PHP coder in the world, because you're still learning. I mean I'm not putting you down. I'm just saying it just sounds to me like that wasn't a requirement to get to where you were. Correct?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:35:42): Yes, you're right. And my opinion on that is that I don't have any qualifications in PHP or any of the other languages that I work with. So you don't need a qualification, but it is good to have it and it could give you a much better base to what you want to do, which I didn't have to start off with. So, it's up to you really, but having a qualification is good, if you can do that.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:36:11): So, what do you think makes your company and your plugins that you make - what do you think it is that makes you strong and makes people want to come do business with you, and to buy your stuff? You know, what is it about Tribulant and your plugins that stand above the rest?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:36:41): I would say a love for what we do. We love our work every single day - the software that we develop and the way that we market it. We even enjoy the customer support, which is hard at times, keeping everyone happy, but we try out best and we have a passion for this. Myself and my colleagues as well. So, I would say if you enjoy it and you actually love your business and your work, then nothing is going to get you down and you will continue to fight for it every single day and improve the areas which need improvement. Always work hard at it.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:37:24): Sounds good. You know, I love when I hear you talking about passion and the passion that you have for this because, you know, I really think that people just need to find and start with what is it that you love to do. You know, and if you love to do something, that's really the underlining. You know, that's the base. You have to start there. You don't want to be doing something that you don't love.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:37:54): Yes.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:37:55): So, you know, I really -- you know, I keep hearing you mention the fact that this is your passion, so I'm just saying that I really think that that's a very important and key feature. So, do you have any other final comments or thoughts that you might want to share with someone who is out there thinking they might want to start a business like this? You know, anything that you might want to share as, you know, a last few final words I guess?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:38:26): Basically what I've said and just the fact that starting a business is not easy at all. Not always. It could be at times I'm sure, but it'll be hard work. And it might not be easy at the beginning. You might not generate money immediately. You'll spend many hours trying to get your business off the ground. But the more you put into it, the more you will put into it because of your love for your business. And the more work you put into it, the more you will actually reap from it. And you will realize that as long as you work hard you will start selling your products or your service and you will learn certain things along the way. And either regret things that you do wrong or improve certain areas.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:39:24): Now, what things don't you like about your business or having your own business? What are the hard things? What are the things that you go: "You know, I can't stand this"? What are the things that you have to do that you find that you really don't like or that you're struggling with?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:39:44): With the business itself nothing specifically. I would say I enjoy certain things more. I enjoy development even up until today. I'm the company owner, but I have a passion for software and programming, so I enjoy that more than doing customer support, for example. But I still enjoy that area as well. If there's anything I don't like doing at all it's being distracted, and being away from business and work, and not being able to work when I really need to or want to.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:40:23): Okay.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:40:24): But I might sound like a workaholic, which I partially am, but not fully, at least.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:40:31): How many hours a day do you think you work?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:40:35): Eight during the day roughly, and then I will try and put in another three or four hours in the evenings to do some extra work when it's quiet and there's no one else around.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:40:50): And what about on the weekends? Do you also do this on the weekends?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:40:55): I used to. We recently had a newborn baby, so--

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:41:01): Congratulations.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:41:01): --I have to. Thank you very much. So I have to attend to that a bit, and I really do enjoy that. I don't see that as a distraction like I mentioned before. But I would sometimes still work over weekends. It is important to rest though and it is important to have a break, and breakaway from business and get it off your mind for a moment, or a day, or for a weekend even. Just so that you can be more productive when you start the new week.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:41:36): Okay. Great. Now, on the website, at WhatShouldIBe.me, we're going to have some links there and some information from the interview, including a link to the website where you have Tribulant so people can see how you set up and designed your website, what products you're offering just to get an idea of where you are today with Tribulant. And I think you said you also have some other projects that you're also working on, and we'll also put some links to those, but would you consider them almost like a new baby? You know, a new project that you're trying to launch, or is Tribulant and those WordPress plugins still, you know, your passion?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:42:31): I would say Tribulant is my main passion. We have another local business called Rusties. It's local to our city and we basically have a business statically for businesses in the city. And we do marketing for those businesses, and we expose them on the Internet using search engines and social channels like Facebook, and Twitter, and a bunch of other different channels as well. It's something on the side for me because I can't put all my time into it, but we have two people at the office working on that. And they're very reliable, which makes it easier for me. So I don't have to worry about that and I can attend to the main focus, which is Tribulant, from day-to-day.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:43:24): Now, the two people that are working on the Rusties project, which is the local advertising. Is that the same two people that are also working on support for Tribulant?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:43:34): No, they're two different people.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:43:35): Wow.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:43:36): They're both local.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:43:38): Well, congratulations on growing, you know, Tribulant and the business. That sounds great.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:43:44): Thank you. I appreciate it.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:43:56): Do you have any expectation of where you might like to see, you know, the company, yourself, the growth of things go over, maybe, like the next five years? Any ideas on how you'd like to see things progress?

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:44:01): Yeah. I've given a lot of thought to it and I'm not really set on what the long-term plan is, but we're looking at some new software development - new packages - and we've just partnered on two new packages that we'll be releasing in the future. And they're basically each serving their own purpose in the WordPress market, and that's it for now. The short-term is basically two new packages that will be coming out soon. Long-term, I would say for now, at this time, is maintenance on existing packages, as people will always be using these. We're not going to discontinue them or stop developing them. People are always going to need bulk emails. People are always going to need to sell products and services online, so the improvement of those and maintaining them and updating them. And very long-term, I would say is the possibility of stepping over to different frameworks other than WordPress and developing in those areas, but I haven't really gone into that much.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:45:22): Okay, terrific. So, I just want to recap and let people know that, you know, this interview and the purpose for this interview is to try to let you know, if you have an interest in, you know, doing something like Antonie has put together with Tribulant, as a programmer, and then writing a program and selling it on the Internet, and building a company like this, if you're wanting to do something like that and have an interested in that, I'm just hoping that this information that Antonie has shared with us today about he got here, what he's doing, what it took to get here will inspire you and help you to go down your own path. So I thank you very much, Antonie, for taking the time to be here today, and I appreciate it very much.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:46:14): Thank you for you as well, Gary.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:46:16): And as I said, we'll have additional links and details on the Internet for this particular recording and this particular interview. So people are welcome to visit there and they can take a look closer at your work and I guess they'll also be able to communicate with you through various means like Facebook or Twitter. If you have those accounts, we'll list those for you as well.

Antonie Potgieter (Interviewee: 00:46:42): Yeah, great. Thank you very much.

Gary Gordon (Interviewer: 00:46:43): All right. Thank you very much everybody. Bye-bye.