A marketing whiz and a coding genius, sick of the 9-to-5 grind, decide to shake things up. They launch a local web design business, thinking they've found their calling. But life had other plans.

As Katie spills the beans on Barn2's evolution, you'll see how a single client request snowballed into a game-changing product line. It's a tale of stumbling onto golden opportunities, learning to trust your gut, and the power of listening to your customers.

But it's not all smooth sailing. Katie opens up about the growing pains of scaling a business, the challenges of building a remote team, and the constant balancing act of staying true to your vision while adapting to market demands.

Whether you're a budding entrepreneur, a WordPress enthusiast, or just someone who loves a good success story, Katie's candid insights will leave you itching to chase your own dreams.

So grab a coffee, settle in, and get ready for a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to make it in the wild world of WordPress plugins.

Hi Katie, could you share a bit about your background and the story of how Barn2 started?

I started my career in a range of jobs relating to marketing and project management, mostly in the public sector. At the same time, my husband Andy was working as a senior software developer - also in the public sector. After a few years, we became disillusioned with the inflexibility of working for a large organization and started to dream of running our own business together. We didn't really have any ideas, but things came to a head in 2019 and we started a local web design shop which was originally called 'Cadover Creative'. Since I had a marketing background and Andy was technical, we had a good range of skills and were able to get projects quite easily. This accelerated hugely when we started promoting ourselves as WordPress specialists, which allowed us to get bigger clients both nationally and internationally. That's when we rebranded as 'Barn2'. 

Barn2 started as a web design agency, what made you transition into a WordPress plugin studio?

We quite liked running a web design agency, but soon realised that selling our time was limiting our growth. We scaled to some extent by recruiting a virtual team of freelancers (at the time we had no interest in becoming managers or building an in-house team). However, I found it really hard to find good project managers who could work directly with clients on my behalf and quality was suffering, so I gave up. Instead, we turned our attention to selling WordPress products because we felt that this would be more scalable. We were also attracted to the idea that we wouldn't be responsible for people's entire websites, which made it difficult to take time off because you had to be "on call" all the time. 

How do you come up with ideas for your plugins? Are they based on your own experience, or do you follow a specific process to develop and refine new ideas?

I firmly believe that the best ideas come to you when you're out there doing something. If you sit down trying to think of ideas then nothing will happen. 

Our first plugin ideas came from our work with clients. We could see the pain points and fix them by developing products to sell. For example, our Posts Table Pro plugin came from a client project. The client hired us to create a searchable table/index of this blog posts, which we then released as a free plugin with his permission. After that, people started using the free plugin and sending us feature requests. These were a golden opportunity to get insights into premium plugins we could build that would sell. For example, people wanted to list custom post types, custom fields and taxonomies in a table instead of just blog posts, so we released Posts Table Pro. And after that, the ideas kept coming! Posts Table Pro users kept asking for better ways to display documents and WooCommerce products in the table, so we built our two most successful plugins ever - Document Library Pro and WooCommerce Product Table. All from one small client project! 

Now we have lots of plugins, it's easy to find new ideas because we know how customers are using our plugins and what the gaps are. 

My advice is to immerse yourself in the sector you're interested in. That's when the ideas will come to you. When you're close to something, you'll be surprised at how many gaps in the market still exist! 

How do you validate new plugin ideas? Do you engage with your customers or the community to ensure there's a demand? Could you elaborate on this process with an example of one of your plugins?

To be honest, I don't do any formal idea validation for new plugins. That's largely because the idea comes from my existing knowledge of the industry, so additional market research wouldn't be particularly helpful. 

However, existing customers can be a useful resource. For example, as I mentioned above, we built our Document Library Pro plugin after Posts Table Pro customers asked for better ways to list documents. We knew the demand was there because of the number of feature requests, so we were already confident in that. However, we didn't know exactly how people wanted their document libraries to function. As a result, I emailed all the Posts Table Pro customers with a survey on what features they would like to see in Document Library Pro. This helped us to prioritize new features and decide what to include in the minimum viable product that we initially released. I created a spreadsheet which listed the amount of demand for each feature so that I could do this scientifically instead of just base on gut instinct. 

Could you describe the organizational structure of Barn2? How has your team grown and evolved since the company's inception?

Barn2 is a 100% remote team, with everyone working independently from their own locations all over the world. 

I said a minute ago that when we were running the web design agency, Andy and I didn't want to grow a team. That continued as we grew the plugin company, which definitely slowed down the growth of the Barn2 team. 

Andy and I initially did everything ourselves. Andy did all the development, and I did all the marketing. We shared out customer support between us. 

As our sales increased over time, this stopped being realistic. We had far more ideas than Andy had the capacity to build as sole developer. I was spending more than half of my time on support and didn't have enough time for marketing. But we still didn't want an in-house team!

As a result, we started hiring freelancers - just like we had under the original web design agency. We hired developers from Codeable - initially on small trial projects before committing to them for larger plugins. We also hired support engineers from https://levelup.support, many of whom we still work with today.

After a couple of years of this, we realised that we were spending so much money on freelancers that it would be a lot more cost-effective to hire in-house staff. As a result, in 2021 we advertised for our first developers without much hope of finding anyone good enough. We ended up hiring two excellent senior developers who are still with us today! This helped to overcome our preconceptions about not wanting to build a team. 

As you can probably gather, the Barn2 team has grown organically without being planned in a central way. We have simply hired people and created roles when we needed them. Because of this, my approach has manager has always been quite laid-back and I like team members who work hard without needing to be micro-managed. That also fits well with my lifestyle goals for the company. 

In mid-2023, I read a management book which said that as a manager, you should consider what it's like to work for your company. The thought had never occurred to me! I realised that people have their actual careers with Barn2 and I should probably start taking it more seriously. To help with this, I worked with TeamWP to survey our team. Amazingly, their feedback was incredibly positive and above industry benchmarks. Clearly, the laid-back approach works! This is underlined by the fact that no one has ever left the team voluntarily, so they must be happy! 

The team is now very close-knit and about 20 people. It's sub-divided into development, marketing and support teams. Once a month, we have a social call to get to know one another better. We also meet in person at WordCamps, although the entire team has never got together face-to-face because that would be very expensive given our far-flung locations. 

Barn2 has outsourced the plugin support to LevelUp Support service. What was the thought process in outsourcing the support? And how is your experience working with LevelUp?

I would highly recommend LevelUp because they are much better at vetting, training and monitoring support engineers than I would be if I did it myself. I currently have 5 full-time LevelUp team members. They are fully integrated into the Barn2 team and our processes so it doesn't feel like they're outsourced. 

Does Barn2's revenue come solely from plugin sales, or do you still offer other services? Which source contributes more significantly to your overall revenue?

The vast majority of our revenue comes from plugin sales and renewals. We still have some historical clients whose websites we still look after, and we also receive affiliate commission from recommending other companies' products on our blog and to customers. However, they only make up a tiny proportion of our revenue. In the past year, our revenue has come from the following sources: 

- $1,800,000 from plugin sales

- $35,000 from our historical web design clients

- $17,000 from affiliate commission

- $4,000 from a brief period while we sold advertising on our website

What is your launch strategy for new plugins? Can you walk us through a typical launch process, from the preparation phase to the first few weeks post-launch?

I have a LONG checklist for launching new plugins! This covers all sorts of things including technical changes and marketing content for our website, documentation, outreach to spread the word about the launch, planning blog posts about the plugin and its various use cases, telling existing customers who have complementary plugins, and so on. 

While I am involved in setting requirements and testing new plugins, a lot of my work happens after the plugin is launched. That's when the marketing kicks in and I spend a lot of time on this. 

What are your primary distribution methods for Barn2 plugins? What marketing strategies were most effective in the early days?

Our best marketing channel has also been our own blog. When we started, our affiliates generated a lot of revenue for us but now we have built good domain authority of our own, we can rank for a lot of the keywords that we need to. Our organic SEO rankings did drop over the past few months which has been scary, but it is still our primary channel. 

YouTube is our next best channel but is far behind the blog. 

What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of marketing products within the WordPress ecosystem?

WordPress is a fantastic ecosystem for building successful products because it's the world's biggest website platform and has such a large number of users. This makes the market very large and increases your chances of success. 

The disadvantage is that you're dependent on a platform that you can't control. For example, I've been disappointed by the usability of the Gutenberg block editor which was supposed to transform WordPress and help it to compete with other platforms. It's frustrating that our plugins are dependent on third party software because it often creates a lot of development work that we wouldn't otherwise choose to do, for example integrating with Gutenberg blocks that are buggy and unfinished. I would rather put resources into adding new features to our plugins which will increase our sales! 

It's also scary that our sales are highly dependent on the overall usage of WordPress. Reports of its declining market share have been exaggerated, but the truth is that it's currently fairly stagnant and not growing as fast as it used to. This makes it hard for product companies like ourselves to grow. 

What is your product philosophy, and what makes your plugins stand out in the competitive market?

My philosophy is to apply professional software development principles and best practices to WordPress plugins, which most of our competitors don't do. To do that, we hire experienced software developers and architects who understand how to do things properly. This helps to make our plugins the best on the market and encourages customers to trust them, boosting our reputation. 

We also keep a close eye on our feature request list, ensuring that we prioritize our resources on building features that the latest possible number of customers will benefit from. This is a good way to use limited resources because it's not possible to add everything that people ask for, and not all new features will improve sales. 

You're quite active in the WordPress community. What has been your most valuable experience or takeaway from participating in WordPress events?

I learn so much from the WordPress community. I try to give back to it by helping other people - for example, by helping other product owners to grow through my WP Product Talk podcast. In turn, I get a lot out of the community because I learn from all the amazing people who share their experiences. I learn a lot from the guests I interview on the podcast and often put things they say into practice at Barn2. I also get a lot out of being active on Twitter - it's like an extended mastermind group full of fellow WordPress product owners willing to share their perspective and give me free business advice! 

What is the most important lesson you've learned as an entrepreneur in the WordPress space? If you were to start Barn2 again today, what would you do differently?

I spent a lot of time "thinking small", and should have been more ambitious. For example, I released a lot of single feature plugins which were unique and filled a gap in the market, but would never generate significant sales. These ended up being a distraction from bigger projects, and I sold 7 of our plugins to another company 6 months ago so that we wouldn't be spread so thin. 

If I was starting again today, then I would only develop products that had a sizeable target audience. For each decision, I would think "Will this make a significant difference or is it a distraction compared to something more important I could be doing?"

What advice would you give to WordPress developers or entrepreneurs looking to build and launch their own plugin or service, based on your experiences with Barn2?

Wow, there's too much to share here! So my advice would be to listen to all the previous episodes of WP Product Talk where I have in-depth discussions with other members of the WordPress community about many different aspects of building a WordPress product company. 

As we wrap up this chat with Katie, it's clear that success in the WordPress world isn't just about coding skills or marketing savvy. It's about grit, adaptability, and a willingness to learn from every twist and turn.

Katie's journey from accidental entrepreneur to plugin powerhouse is a testament to the opportunities that await those brave enough to seize them. Her story reminds us that sometimes, the best ideas come when you're not looking for them – and that staying open to new possibilities can lead to unexpected triumphs.

But perhaps the most refreshing takeaway is Katie's honesty about the bumps along the road. From the challenges of scaling a team to the constant pressure of staying relevant in a fast-paced industry, she doesn't sugarcoat the realities of running a WordPress business.

As you mull over Katie's insights, ask yourself: What untapped opportunities are hiding in your own work? How can you turn your challenges into stepping stones for growth?

And hey, if Katie's story got your entrepreneurial juices flowing, you're in luck! We've got a whole series of interviews with WordPress movers and shakers waiting for you. Each one is packed with unique perspectives and nuggets of wisdom that might just spark your next big idea.

So why stop here? Dive into our other interviews and keep riding this wave of inspiration. Who knows? The next success story we feature could be yours.