I hinted at a rebranding of my business last week, in my post about Thanksgiving Business Planning.
I’ve gone through with my rebrand and I wanted to explain why I’ve done this.
So drum roll, WPDude has become bada-bada-bada-bada-bada-bada-bada NeilMatthews.co, the crowd erupts into spontaneous applauds 🙂
Dooooood!
I cannot even say the word dude without wincing. It’s not a word I ever use in normal day to day conversation. Why would I brand my business as that?
Well, back in 2008 when I started this journey, a 6 letter domain name was hard to find, so I leapt at the chance for this domain. WPDude was born without too much thought. Let that be a lesson to you kids out there, choose your domain name wisely.
I’m 46 years old for flip sake, I’m not a dude I’m a grown ass adult. The dude had to go.
I’m going to paraphrase a comment from a client.
I thought I was hiring a kid to fix my website, much to my pleasure I found out it was a middle aged man, I felt much better knowing that
Tagline
My tagline has changed to, from “Your WordPress Help” to “I Fix WordPress Sites”, you cannot be any clearer than that.
The majority of my work is stepping in when a site breaks or needs complex work.
Clients Want My Skills
My clients pay me for my particular set of skills, people hire Neil Matthews, not some comic book character called WPDude.
Working under a personal brand
I still have a backend team looking after maintenance work, but I am their client, not you. I act as a middleman on all communication
I’m not building a business to Sell
I wrote about building a business you love, in it I talk about how difficult it will be for me to sell my business. Who wants to buy a job.
I’ve embraced this and I now know I probably won’t sell this business, so why brand it as something other than me that can be sold.
What Does WP Mean Anyway
There is a dance you have to dance when you work in the WordPress arena, you cannot use the trademarked term WordPress in your domain name you have to use WP instead.
You will see a lot of people using WP in their domain name, but does anyone know what that means outside of the WordPress community, I doubt it.
Here is the memo just in case you missed it https://wordpress.org/about/domains/.
Flexibility
Moving to NeilMatthews.co allows me more flexibility in the work I do, for example, I’m interested in writing more about building a µAgency I’ve got a book in me on this subject. Not branding myself as a WordPress only grants me more flexibility to do this type of work.
Apps are rising, my ability to sell app development services is also something I am interested in you don’t hire a WordPress dude to develop your app.
I cannot see this happening, but WordPress could drop out of favour for a new tool, rebranding NeilMatthews.co gives me redundancy against that.
I want to write about topics outside of WordPress on my blog, some of my most well-received posts are about building online business. Not having a WordPress moniker allows me to do this.
It’s Scary
I flipped the switch yesterday, and I’m anxiously watching my stats and signups
Guess what, nothing has changed, requests for work have dropped in everything is fine. All the stress and worry about a change like this has dissolved.
Wrap Up – The Rebranding of WPDude
My primary business is still WordPress support and development, I’m not changing that, I just want to step out from the WPDude brand and work as myself, Neil Matthews.
So I’m a card-carrying solopreneur now, thanks for your attention, announcement over.